harry potter
Jonah Hex
has been, concerning the harry potter stories/universe
thanks
Matthew Russotto
Jonah Hex <jona...@whc.net> wrote:
>i m new here and am just wondering if a text adventure is being or made or
>has been, concerning the harry potter stories/universe
Not bloody likely. Can you say "Harry Potter meets Lord Voldemort's
Copyright Lawyers"?
--
Matthew T. Russotto mrus...@speakeasy.net
=====
Dmitry is free, but the DMCA survives. DMCA delenda est!
"Extremism in defense of liberty is no vice, and moderation in pursuit
of justice is no virtue."
Zimri
news:u3p3o7l...@corp.supernews.com...
> i m new here and am just wondering if a text adventure is being or made or
> has been, concerning the harry potter stories/universe
No, but I hear Stephen Ambrose is working on a similar work called "Henry
Clayshaper and the Philosopher's Rock".
-- Z
Aris Katsaris
> has been, concerning the harry potter stories/universe
It wouldn't be able to enter the yearly IF contest, that's for
sure...
But I admit I would love to see such a game. Morally and
probably legally as well, it's the same as writing fanfic about
it --provided it's freeware, of course... (which means that
Rawling's lawyers could probably hurt you for doing it but
I doubt they'd care enough to do so)
Aris Katsaris
Knight37
> i m new here and am just wondering if a text adventure is being or made
> or has been, concerning the harry potter stories/universe
None so far. Either no one's got the moxy to release an obvious copyright
infringement or maybe it's just not good IF material. I remember when IFers
didn't worry so much about derivative works. Bored of the Rings, Star Trek
games, etc. Not that all of those were good, and some were parody, which has
much better legal status.
--
Knight37
"You have entered the Twilight Zone
Beyond this world strange things are known
Use the key, unlock the door
See what your fate might have in store
Come explore your dreams' creation
Enter this world of imagination" -- Rush "The Twilight Zone"
David A. Cornelson
news:a1jt06$1eo$1...@ulysses.noc.ntua.gr...
> It wouldn't be able to enter the yearly IF contest, that's for
> sure...
I suspect the ifarchivers wouldn't allow it on their servers either. I fear
the HP lawyers _would_ come after anyone involved. Or possibly EA, which
owns "all interactive fiction rights" to Harry Potter.
I think HP would make excellent IF content. It just ain't ever gonna happen.
Jarb
Matthew Russotto
Knight37 <knig...@email.com> wrote:
>"Jonah Hex" <jona...@whc.net> had the moxy to write:
>
>> i m new here and am just wondering if a text adventure is being or made
>> or has been, concerning the harry potter stories/universe
>
>None so far. Either no one's got the moxy to release an obvious copyright
>infringement or maybe it's just not good IF material. I remember when IFers
>didn't worry so much about derivative works. Bored of the Rings, Star Trek
>games, etc. Not that all of those were good, and some were parody, which has
>much better legal status.
Those were the days when the Huge Evil Intellecutal Property Companies
didn't have eyes and tentacles everywhere, and you could do what you
will by operating under the radar. Nowadays, with strongly enforced
trademark, copyright, patent, "tresspass of chattel", and libel laws, not to
mention the DMCA, you can't really do much of anything safely anymore.
Mikko P Vuorinen
>But I admit I would love to see such a game. Morally and
Someone should write one anonymously. If nobody knows who wrote it, no one
can be sued.
--
)))) (((( + Mikko Vuorinen + mvuo...@cc.helsinki.fi
)) OO `oo'((( + Dilbon@IRC&ifMUD + http://www.helsinki.fi/~mvuorine/
6 (_) ( ((( + GSM 050-5859733 +
`____c 8__/((( + + En näe euromerkkiä nyysseissä.
Matthew Russotto
Mikko P Vuorinen <mvuo...@cc.helsinki.fi> wrote:
>In <a1jt06$1eo$1...@ulysses.noc.ntua.gr> "Aris Katsaris" <kats...@otenet.gr> writes:
>
>>But I admit I would love to see such a game. Morally and
>
>Someone should write one anonymously. If nobody knows who wrote it, no one
>can be sued.
Wrong. Everyone who hosts the game on a site can be sued. Along with
whoever posted it. And their providers too. (and no, being in Europe
doesn't help much)
Jonathan Penton
news:u3rrcj2...@corp.supernews.com...
> In article <a1kqa3$h3q$1...@oravannahka.helsinki.fi>,
> Mikko P Vuorinen <mvuo...@cc.helsinki.fi> wrote:
> >In <a1jt06$1eo$1...@ulysses.noc.ntua.gr> "Aris Katsaris"
<kats...@otenet.gr> writes:
> >
> >>But I admit I would love to see such a game. Morally and
> >
> >Someone should write one anonymously. If nobody knows who wrote it, no
one
> >can be sued.
>
> Wrong. Everyone who hosts the game on a site can be sued. Along with
> whoever posted it. And their providers too. (and no, being in Europe
> doesn't help much)
Gimme a B! Gimme an E! Gimme an R! Gimme an N! Gimme an E! What's that
spell? Berne Convention!
Being in China would help, though.
--
Jonathan Penton
http://www.unlikelystories.org
Magnus Olsson
Matthew Russotto <russ...@wanda.pond.com> wrote:
>In article <Xns91926B72B...@209.155.56.100>,
>Knight37 <knig...@email.com> wrote:
>>"Jonah Hex" <jona...@whc.net> had the moxy to write:
>>
>>> i m new here and am just wondering if a text adventure is being or made
>>> or has been, concerning the harry potter stories/universe
>>
>>None so far. Either no one's got the moxy to release an obvious copyright
>>infringement or maybe it's just not good IF material. I remember when IFers
>>didn't worry so much about derivative works. Bored of the Rings, Star Trek
>>games, etc. Not that all of those were good, and some were parody, which has
>>much better legal status.
>
>Those were the days when the Huge Evil Intellecutal Property Companies
>didn't have eyes and tentacles everywhere, and you could do what you
>will by operating under the radar. Nowadays, with strongly enforced
>trademark, copyright, patent, "tresspass of chattel", and libel laws, not to
>mention the DMCA, you can't really do much of anything safely anymore.
You never could, really. And despite all Paramount's efforts, Star Trek
fan fiction still flourishes.
Is there any Harry Potter fanfic out there? Harry Potter slashfic
(<shudder>)?
But IFF (interactive fan fiction) has never been very popular, it seems
- except for the XTrek subgenre. There are a few examples, but nothing
like the huge amounts of static fanfic on the Net. Fear of copyright
lawyers can't be the only reason.
--
Magnus Olsson (m...@df.lth.se, m...@pobox.com)
------ http://www.pobox.com/~mol ------
Jonathan Penton
news:a1maab$54j$1...@news.lth.se...
Yes and yes. Search Google Groups for "harry potter sex." It's very
enlightening.
> But IFF (interactive fan fiction) has never been very popular, it seems
> - except for the XTrek subgenre. There are a few examples, but nothing
> like the huge amounts of static fanfic on the Net. Fear of copyright
> lawyers can't be the only reason.
The limited acclaim offered to fan fic writers in the IF community may play
a part, but I suspect fear of Copyright lawyers causes the lion's share. The
average fan fic writer can't be bothered to use a spellchecker; these are
not the sorts of people who will sit down to the laborous process of
creating an IF game. There are certainly some very dedicated fan fic writers
out there, but they have a very easy time distributing their work and
winning acclaim in their field. If an author were to switch to IF, they
would have almost no distribution options, because of that whole Copyright
thing. It wouldn't be worth the huge effort.
L. Ross Raszewski
>The limited acclaim offered to fan fic writers in the IF community may play
>a part, but I suspect fear of Copyright lawyers causes the lion's share. The
>average fan fic writer can't be bothered to use a spellchecker; these are
>not the sorts of people who will sit down to the laborous process of
>creating an IF game. There are certainly some very dedicated fan fic writers
>out there, but they have a very easy time distributing their work and
>winning acclaim in their field. If an author were to switch to IF, they
>would have almost no distribution options, because of that whole Copyright
>thing. It wouldn't be worth the huge effort.
Ah yes. That. I suspect the lion's share of the reason is, though I
hate to say it, that we're something of a high-and-mighty lot. I
suspect that the proportion of fanfic writers who can be bothered to
use a spellchecker is a lot higher than we often suppose. If someone
were to write a truly serious fan fiction IF game, though, he'd not
only have a hard time distributing it, he'd almost certainly be met
with snide derision (Not entirely unfairly; we've played our share of
really bad IF, I know), and with all manner of shouts of "That's
copyright violation".
[1] Yeah. I write some fan fiction. No. I'm not crazy enough to do it
as IF.
Magnus Olsson
Jonathan Penton <unli...@flash.net> wrote:
>The
>average fan fic writer can't be bothered to use a spellchecker; these are
>not the sorts of people who will sit down to the laborous process of
>creating an IF game.
OTOH, some fan fic writers are extermely competent; sometimes I wonder
why they bother writing for a "market" that not only is non-paying,
but illegal.
>There are certainly some very dedicated fan fic writers
>out there, but they have a very easy time distributing their work and
>winning acclaim in their field. If an author were to switch to IF, they
>would have almost no distribution options, because of that whole Copyright
>thing. It wouldn't be worth the huge effort.
Fanfic IF could be distributed in exactly the same way as static
fanfic: via fly-by-nite websites (that exist until the lawyers detect
them and send a cease-and-desist letter) and via Usenet (there are
lots of binary groups that carry far worse, from a legal standpoint,
material than fanfic.
Jonathan Penton
> In article <Zfy%7.2152$F95.41...@newssvr17.news.prodigy.com>,
> Jonathan Penton <unli...@flash.net> wrote:
> >The
> >average fan fic writer can't be bothered to use a spellchecker; these are
> >not the sorts of people who will sit down to the laborous process of
> >creating an IF game.
>
> OTOH, some fan fic writers are extermely competent; sometimes I wonder
> why they bother writing for a "market" that not only is non-paying,
> but illegal.
It's true, although I rarely encounter high-quality fan fic by casually
surfing the web.
OTOH, most of the mainstream writing I encounter by casually surfing the web
is also very bad.
> >There are certainly some very dedicated fan fic writers
> >out there, but they have a very easy time distributing their work and
> >winning acclaim in their field. If an author were to switch to IF, they
> >would have almost no distribution options, because of that whole
Copyright
> >thing. It wouldn't be worth the huge effort.
>
> Fanfic IF could be distributed in exactly the same way as static
> fanfic: via fly-by-nite websites (that exist until the lawyers detect
> them and send a cease-and-desist letter) and via Usenet (there are
> lots of binary groups that carry far worse, from a legal standpoint,
> material than fanfic.
How many IF groups does Usenet currently support? Three? I don't know how
sophisticated Google Groups is -- would it carry a .z5 file?
Jonathan Penton
news:3c3ed618....@news.hotkey.net.au...
> anything? It's free, after all, not a commercial enterprise - nobody
> is out to commit a wrong against the writer.
>
> But, then again, maybe i'm just an idealist. The real world can put
> things much differently.
>
> Matt.
I don't know if you're an idealist, but you've received some misinformation
about the nature of Copyright. If you do creative work at all, I suggest
http://www.benedict.com for some basic info.
M Burnham
<unli...@flash.net> wrote:
But isn't it not just ethical, but legal to make free IF about
Adam Thornton
>Is there any Harry Potter fanfic out there? Harry Potter slashfic
>(<shudder>)?
As a matter of fact, there is. Mostly Harry-Draco. I'm sure a little
Googling will turn it up for you. No, I don't remember the URL.
Adam
Adam Thornton
L. Ross Raszewski <lrasz...@loyola.edu> wrote:
>If someone
>were to write a truly serious fan fiction IF game, though, he'd not
>only have a hard time distributing it, he'd almost certainly be met
>with snide derision (Not entirely unfairly; we've played our share of
>really bad IF, I know), and with all manner of shouts of "That's
>copyright violation".
Hey!
_SMTUC_ was a truly serious work of fan fiction.
It's just that the fiction it was fanning was _Space Moose_, not _Star
Trek_.
Adam
Knight37
> But isn't it not just ethical, but legal to make free IF about
> anything? It's free, after all, not a commercial enterprise - nobody
> is out to commit a wrong against the writer.
>
> But, then again, maybe i'm just an idealist. The real world can put
> things much differently.
The short answer is no. It is not legal to make free IF about anything. If
you use someone else's characters, settings, etc, you have to get permission
from the copyright holder, legally.
--
Knight37
Everywhere I travel, tiny life. Single-serving sugar, single-serving cream,
single pat of butter. The microwave Cordon bleu hobby-kit. Shampoo-
conditioner combos. Sample-packaged mouthwash. The people I meet on flights?
They're single-serving friends.
-- Narrator played by Edward Norton, "Fight Club"
Aris Katsaris
>
> You never could, really. And despite all Paramount's efforts, Star Trek
> fan fiction still flourishes.
>
> Is there any Harry Potter fanfic out there?
Last few weeks it has, for better or worse, become a small obsession
of mine...
Right now, I'd recommend Cassandra Claire
http://www.schnoogle.com/authorLinks/Cassandra_Claire/
(some extremely hilarious lines in here),
Barb,
http://www.schnoogle.com/authorLinks/Barb/
(starts rather slow and weak - but later turns to great fun),
and R.J. Anderson,
http://www.schnoogle.com/authorLinks/R_J_Anderson/
(some Mary Sueism, alas, but again it quickly improves)
Aris Katsaris
John W. Kennedy
> OTOH, some fan fic writers are extermely competent; sometimes I wonder
> why they bother writing for a "market" that not only is non-paying,
> but illegal.
Sometimes just for fun, or as a technical exercise, or because you get
an idea in your head and writing the dam' thing is the quickest and
easiest way to exorcise it. I think my "A Hobbit in Oz" (which _did_,
in the end, win the fiction prize at the Munchkin Convention a few years
ago) came out of all of those. Marrying the two styles, coming up with
a plausible plot, and exploring Oz-5000-years-ago -- I'm glad to have
made the experiment.
For others, of course, it's the Ensign-Mary-Sue-Ellen factor, or just a
desperate wish to be a writer, combined with a thorough lack of
imagination.
--
John W. Kennedy
"Compact is becoming contract; man only earns and pays"
-- Charles Williams
Georgina Bensley
> In article <Zfy%7.2152$F95.41...@newssvr17.news.prodigy.com>,
> Jonathan Penton <unli...@flash.net> wrote:
> >The
> >average fan fic writer can't be bothered to use a spellchecker; these are
> >not the sorts of people who will sit down to the laborous process of
> >creating an IF game.
>
> OTOH, some fan fic writers are extermely competent; sometimes I wonder
> why they bother writing for a "market" that not only is non-paying,
> but illegal.
Well, the Xena fanfic writers *do* publish and are assumably paid,
although I don't know if any official figures have ever been released on
the subject... nor do I know how much the fanfic writer who was hired to
write for the show was paid...
__________________________________________________________________
Duke University Role-playing And Gaming Organization
http://www.duke.edu/web/DRAGO/
David Glasser
No, no, it's all about Snape!
Please note that I know this not because I've read it, just because I've
seen it in the news quite a bit.
--
David Glasser
ne...@davidglasser.net http://www.davidglasser.net/
Jonathan Penton
news:a1n1a0$j2t$3...@news.fsf.net...
That's legally true, and it wasn't the only owner-condoned work of fan
fiction in the 2001 Comp; "Timeout" was much more literally fan fiction,
endorsed by West End Games. I can't believe I forgot that.
I didn't read all the reviews, but I didn't see anyone slamming either piece
for being fan fiction (once legality was established). This tends to support
my belief that legal issues are a big factor in the lack of IFF.
Marnie Parker
>From: Georgina Bensley ge...@duke.edu
>Date: 1/11/2002 12:50 PM Pacific Standard Time
>Message-id:
>Well, the Xena fanfic writers *do* publish and are assumably paid,
>although I don't know if any official figures have ever been released on
>the subject... nor do I know how much the fanfic writer who was hired to
>write for the show was paid...
There is a lot of inconsistency in how fan fic is recieved (whether, tv,
movies, or book fan fic). I hate to say anything specific here, because I
haven't checked my facts, but, for instance some sci-fi writers welcome it and
some do not.
Marion Zimmer Bradley, for instance, now deceased, published books of fan fic
about Darkover. So, she actually sort of encouraged it. Some other sci-fi
authors scream about fan fic.
Welcoming or screaming doesn't seem to stop it though. But IF is really a
different genre than static fan fic, raising different issues. A game is more
permanent in many senses, more a "thing", than some story that may be published
on the Internet in a newsgroup, but be hard to find later. (Those are some of
the facts I have not double-checked, but I suspect that to be true.)
Doe :-)
doea...@aol.com
IF http://members.aol.com/doepage/intfict.htm
(An Iffy Theory | Glulx/Glk for Duncies | unglklib | Inform Primer)
IF Art Gallery http://members.aol.com/iffyart/
IF Review Conspiracy http://www.plover.net/~textfire/conspiracy/
L. Ross Raszewski
>In article <Zfy%7.2152$F95.41...@newssvr17.news.prodigy.com>,
>Jonathan Penton <unli...@flash.net> wrote:
>>The
>>average fan fic writer can't be bothered to use a spellchecker; these are
>>not the sorts of people who will sit down to the laborous process of
>>creating an IF game.
>
>OTOH, some fan fic writers are extermely competent; sometimes I wonder
>why they bother writing for a "market" that not only is non-paying,
>but illegal.
>
Um.... because they have a story that intimately involves characters
and situations from an existing source?
Star Trek fanfic is probably the easiest example I can think of. If
you have an idea that clearly draws from the *universe* established in
the Star Trek series, you have two choices; write fanfic, or mogrify
your story to make sense in a novel universe. If you do the first,
you're one of those damned fanfic authors. If you do the second, then
(a) you are liable to need to craft a *whole lot of universe*, which
probably wasn't your intention (universe crafting is great, but it's
not something everyone wants to do. When I want to write a short
little love story between a man and his phaser, I don't eant to have
to invent the universe first. An "existing" universe has a lot of
weight behind it. If I want to talk about space exploration, I can
either write a thirty page story in the star trek universe, or write a
thirty page story with two hundred pages of explanation about the
universe if I want the same effect of having a work set in a
thorroughly backgrounded universe.) and (b) If the story really does
fit the star trek universe, your created universe will either be a bad
fit, or will *look like a star-trek ripoff*. For some, writing a star
trek rip-off is less desirable than writing a star trek fanfic.
John W. Kennedy
> Marion Zimmer Bradley, for instance, now deceased, published books of fan fic
> about Darkover. So, she actually sort of encouraged it.
Until a fan produced a story close enough to a novel she was writing
that she had to throw away two years of work.
--
John W. Kennedy
"Babylon 5: The Legend of the Rangers"
Coming to the Sci-Fi Channel in the USA, January 19, 2002
Sean T Barrett
>>OTOH, some fan fic writers are extermely competent; sometimes I wonder
>>why they bother writing for a "market" that not only is non-paying,
>>but illegal.
>>
>
>Um.... because they have a story that intimately involves characters
>and situations from an existing source?
>
>Star Trek fanfic is probably the easiest example I can think of. If
>you have an idea that clearly draws from the *universe* established in
>the Star Trek series, you have two choices; write fanfic, or mogrify
>your story to make sense in a novel universe.
Or three, pick a different idea.
Ideas are generally cheap; execution is what matters. Rather than
throw all of that hard work executing an idea "for a 'market' that
not only is non-paying, but illegal," why not develop a different
idea?
There's also a possible motivation of "pay homage to an existing
property", but there are other ways to do that, a la Zeta Space.
SeanB
Marnie Parker
>From: "John W. Kennedy" jwk...@attglobal.net
>Date: 1/11/2002 2:54 PM Pacific Standard Time
>Message-id:
>Until a fan produced a story close enough to a novel she was writing
>that she had to throw away two years of work.
Really? Interesting.
Doe That is a big downside of fan fic.
TheCycoONE
"Jonathan Penton" <unli...@flash.net> wrote in message
news:LAm%7.1769$3z3.34...@newssvr17.news.prodigy.com...
become just like the United States, Britain, and all them other right wing
countries.
There are very few laws in Antartica (Providing it doesn't desturb the
landscape.)
, also in much of the former soviet union software piracy is ignored...
though I think they'd get after you if other countries did. Glademier's
(sp?) pretty anxious to be accepted as a economic competitor, and to do that
they're going to have to do some major sucking up for awhile.
It would be best to come up with your own ideas, but short of that, it would
probably be safer to change names etc. and rip them off so that if they want
to come after you, you could lock it up in court for quite awhile. I'm
guessing they wouldn't waste their time on that.
Alan DeNiro
On (a), people write SF short stories set in their own universes all
the time. Space opera was written before Star Trek, you know. It
usually takes smoke, mirrors, and significant details; in other words,
craft. I think fanfic has a lot more to do with identification with
the characters. Good point on (b).
L. Ross Raszewski
>lrasz...@loyola.edu (L. Ross Raszewski) wrote in message
news:<a1nnib$e95$1...@foobar.cs.jhu.edu>...
>
>the time. Space opera was written before Star Trek, you know. It
>usually takes smoke, mirrors, and significant details; in other words,
>craft. I think fanfic has a lot more to do with identification with
>the characters. Good point on (b).
I didn';t mean to imply that they didn't, or that universe-building
isn't a wortwhile endeavour. But. It isn't always what you want to
do. If I want to write a space opera, and I really think the story
would benefit from having a well-established, thorroughly fleshed-out
world behind it, I have two choices: invent a thorroughly fleshed-out
world, or borrow someone else's. Now, there are all sorts of
wonderful things about inventing a fictional world. But that's not
always what you want to do; you can't invent a thorroughly fleshed-out
well-established fictional world in a standalone short story; you
either need to write a series of stories, or a whole novel. But if the
story you want to tell is really only a short story, inventing the
world is going to involve a lot of excessive exposition -- and even if
you handle it well, it's going to be a very different work than the
one you wanted to write; it's going to be an exposition on a fictional
world with some story thrown in.
As I think, another motiviation for fanfic occurs to me -- wanting
prople to read it. I know it sounds funny; we've just said "it's
illegal and the audience is limited", but, frankly, if you know from
the outset that you have no intention of publishing the story outside
of sticking it on the web, then the fact that it can't legally be
published isn't a big issue. If you wrote a story using new
characters, set in an original fictional universe, and set ti adrift
on the web, well, frankly, your reception would be limited. But you
*know* that if it's fanfic, then there are seekers of fanfic who will
read your story. I'd imagine that it's much more rare for someone to
go scouring the web for "original unpublished sci-fi short stories"
than for someone to go looking for "star trek fanfic".
And in some communities, since the major subject of fanfic is TV
series, fanfic contains a lot of pieces which were originally written
with the initial intention of becoming submissions to the series.
Aris Katsaris
"Marnie Parker" <doea...@aol.com> wrote in message
news:20020111204831...@mb-fa.aol.com...
> >Subject: Re: harry potter
> >From: "John W. Kennedy" jwk...@attglobal.net
> >Date: 1/11/2002 2:54 PM Pacific Standard Time
> >Message-id:
>
> >Until a fan produced a story close enough to a novel she was writing
> >that she had to throw away two years of work.
>
> Really? Interesting.
Hmph. It seems to me that she shouldn't be reading her fans' work exactly
because of that reason. Greg Weisman for example (the creator of the
Gargoyles series) says that he does feel flattered by all the Gargoyles
fanfiction out there, but at the same time strongly refuses to read *any*
Gargoyles fanfiction, just so that problem never appears...
Aris Katsaris
John W. Kennedy
> Hmph. It seems to me that she shouldn't be reading her fans' work exactly
> because of that reason. Greg Weisman for example (the creator of the
> Gargoyles series) says that he does feel flattered by all the Gargoyles
> fanfiction out there, but at the same time strongly refuses to read *any*
> Gargoyles fanfiction, just so that problem never appears...
And people are warned every few days on
news:rec.arts.sf.tv.babylon5.moderated that Story Ideas are a BIG no-no,
because Joe Straczynski hangs out there. It took a year for "Passing
Through Gethsemane" to be made because someone thoughtlessly said, "Gee,
wouldn't it be great if someone who [deleted] discovered [deleted]?"; it
would never have been made at all if the culprit hadn't Done The Right
Thing, hired a lawyer, traveled to L.A., and made out official paperwork
renouncing all claim to the idea.
Matthew Russotto
TheCycoONE <cyc...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>It would be best to come up with your own ideas, but short of that, it would
>probably be safer to change names etc. and rip them off so that if they want
>to come after you, you could lock it up in court for quite awhile. I'm
>guessing they wouldn't waste their time on that.
They are busy trying to get someone who was 15 years old at the time
tossed in jail in Norway. They have essentially unlimited resources to
throw at alleged copyright violaters.
--
Matthew T. Russotto mrus...@speakeasy.net
=====
Dmitry is free, but the DMCA survives. DMCA delenda est!
"Extremism in defense of liberty is no vice, and moderation in pursuit
of justice is no virtue."
Matthew Russotto
John W. Kennedy <jwk...@attglobal.net> wrote:
>And people are warned every few days on
>news:rec.arts.sf.tv.babylon5.moderated that Story Ideas are a BIG no-no,
>because Joe Straczynski hangs out there. It took a year for "Passing
>Through Gethsemane" to be made because someone thoughtlessly said, "Gee,
>wouldn't it be great if someone who [deleted] discovered [deleted]?"; it
>would never have been made at all if the culprit hadn't Done The Right
>Thing, hired a lawyer, traveled to L.A., and made out official paperwork
>renouncing all claim to the idea.
Which just goes to show how badly copyright law has been overextended.
Ideas are explicitly not supposed to be covered by copyright law.
Alan DeNiro
<<<But that's not
always what you want to do; you can't invent a thorroughly fleshed-out
well-established fictional world in a standalone short story; you
either need to write a series of stories, or a whole novel. But if the
story you want to tell is really only a short story, inventing the
world is going to involve a lot of excessive exposition -- and even if
you handle it well, it's going to be a very different work than the
one you wanted to write; it's going to be an exposition on a fictional
world with some story thrown in.>>>
It depends what you mean by "thoroughly fleshed-out." Doubtless, in an
SF short story you're not going to have the ability to cram the
complete history of a world within a 10 or 20 page span, unless you
already have that "shared history" or context of a previous series, a
TV show, or whatever. But a short story can feel "thoroughly
fleshed-out" without having this shared context. Sometimes, moreso.
The nature of a beast with a short story is connotative to begin with.
It's not the purpose of a short story, to begin with, to include the
equivalent of an RPG sourcebook, but to provide RELEVANT expositions,
which at times may be very dense, allusive, and, well, believable. (A
good recent example of what I'm describing is Ted Chiang's "Seventy
Two Letters.") In a novel you have more room to play with, of course.
I realize I might not be disagreeing at all with anything you're
saying, that people might be choosing to write fan-fic for the reasons
you describe. My point is that--that might be one of the reasons for
the level of quality between fanfic vs. original fiction. With a few
exceptions, the people who are writing fanfic aren't necessarily going
to have the storytelling skills--cognition, grasp of vivid language,
or specifically with SF, the ability to process/tweak scientific
principles--to pull off not only credible, but interesting original
stories.
Might this be a product of age difference, too, between the
communities? (In the same way that it struck me--though I could be
wrong--that the people making games with ADRIFT seem to be a younger
crowd). Btw, this is coming from someone who as a teen read plenty of
Dragonlance and Star Trek novels, and who wrote a lot--a lot--of
derivative crap.
Alan
----------
Alan DeNiro
http://www.taverners-koans.com/alan
Werner Purrer
Russotto) wrote:
>
>>i m new here and am just wondering if a text adventure is being or made or
>>has been, concerning the harry potter stories/universe
>
>Not bloody likely. Can you say "Harry Potter meets Lord Voldemort's
>Copyright Lawyers"?
Mmmh I wonder if Steve Meretzky ever read one of the Potter books. The
basic idea of the books were obviously stolen from the Spellcasting
series!
Werner Purrer
wrote:
>i m new here and am just wondering if a text adventure is being or made or
>has been, concerning the harry potter stories/universe
Spellcasting 101,201,301
Werner Purrer
(Matthew Russotto) wrote:
>
>>It would be best to come up with your own ideas, but short of that, it would
>>probably be safer to change names etc. and rip them off so that if they want
>>to come after you, you could lock it up in court for quite awhile. I'm
>>guessing they wouldn't waste their time on that.
>
>They are busy trying to get someone who was 15 years old at the time
>tossed in jail in Norway. They have essentially unlimited resources to
>throw at alleged copyright violaters.
Actually the funny thing is that the guy even didn´t write DeCSS he
only wrote the gui. AFAIR, anyway this guy in the US basically would
be *fucked* the media giants want to make this case a showcase for all
the people so that nobody dares in the future to break copy protection
schemes.
You can bet that they will throw a huge amount of money into that
case. This guys only hope is that the legal system in Europe generally
works better than in the US and the judge sees the whole farce behind
the case. Just my 2cents to the whole tragedy.
John W. Kennedy
>
> In article <3C405F0D...@attglobal.net>,
> John W. Kennedy <jwk...@attglobal.net> wrote:
>
> >And people are warned every few days on
> >news:rec.arts.sf.tv.babylon5.moderated that Story Ideas are a BIG no-no,
> >because Joe Straczynski hangs out there. It took a year for "Passing
> >Through Gethsemane" to be made because someone thoughtlessly said, "Gee,
> >wouldn't it be great if someone who [deleted] discovered [deleted]?"; it
> >would never have been made at all if the culprit hadn't Done The Right
> >Thing, hired a lawyer, traveled to L.A., and made out official paperwork
> >renouncing all claim to the idea.
>
> Which just goes to show how badly copyright law has been overextended.
>
> Ideas are explicitly not supposed to be covered by copyright law.
No, in this case, the problem isn't copyright law, but unscrupulous
lawyers who will (and may they all burn in Hell for it) bring lawsuits
they _know_ are unfounded and unwinnable in court, in the knowledge that
their victims will pay blackmail to avoid the costs and delays of a
trial. (A television series is especially vulnerable because an
injunction might shut down the production process, normally resulting in
total death of the show.) Therefore, Hollywood studios must, for their
own safety, maintain a zero-risk policy.
Magnus Olsson
>> Which just goes to show how badly copyright law has been overextended.
>>
>> Ideas are explicitly not supposed to be covered by copyright law.
>
>No, in this case, the problem isn't copyright law, but unscrupulous
>lawyers who will (and may they all burn in Hell for it) bring lawsuits
>they _know_ are unfounded and unwinnable in court,
And it's not just the lawyers - *anyone* can - and does - raise a lot
of trouble claiming "famous author X ripped off my idea - I want
royalties". No matter how unfounded the claim is, the person making
the claim gets their fifteen minutes in the limelight, and can maybe
make enough money from interviews, or from selling their previously
rejected material which is now hot because of all the publicity, to
pay off the lawyers.
And, for the author, the allegations that they're plagiarists tend
to stick, even if any lawsuit is thrown out of court.
--
Magnus Olsson (m...@df.lth.se, m...@pobox.com)
------ http://www.pobox.com/~mol ------
David Thornley
>>lrasz...@loyola.edu (L. Ross Raszewski) wrote in message
>news:<a1nnib$e95$1...@foobar.cs.jhu.edu>...
>>
>>On (a), people write SF short stories set in their own universes all
>>the time. Space opera was written before Star Trek, you know. It
>>usually takes smoke, mirrors, and significant details; in other words,
>>craft. I think fanfic has a lot more to do with identification with
>>the characters. Good point on (b).
>
as Star Trek fanfic, and then Bujold rewrote it.)
>I didn';t mean to imply that they didn't, or that universe-building
>isn't a wortwhile endeavour. But. It isn't always what you want to
>do. If I want to write a space opera, and I really think the story
>would benefit from having a well-established, thorroughly fleshed-out
>world behind it,
Why? I've seen no end of good stories in all subgenres that used
their own world. While the author needs to have a good picture of
what the world it, and the author has to stick to it, it isn't
necessary to present it as reference material. I'm open to
counterexample, but I really doubt there are good short stories
that cannot be told except in the context of a fleshed-out universe,
and therefore that using somebody else's universe to tell a story
in is probably a sign of bad writing.
Moreover, I don't see Star Trek as a thoroughly fleshed-out universe.
It consists of a lot of rather generic and inconsistent background
material, and some characters that have been written for by lots
of different people operating from guidelines. Most of the series
was one-hour segments that in the end changed nothing, and could
be shown in almost any order without losing consistency (although
after Babylon 5 became popular Star Trek started having longer-running
plots).
You can drop a character into a Star Trek setting, but the settings
are rather bland, and you still have to explain how the character
fits into, and is affected by, the setting. If you can do a good
job of this, you really don't need to use Star Trek. If not, your
story probably isn't all that good.
This applies less to more consistent universes such as Hogwarts
or Middle Earth or Babylon 5, but even then I'd say that any story
idea that can't stand apart from that universe is probably not
all that good. Feel free to supply counterexamples.
Nor do I see any big advantage in having the characters more or
less defined for you. A work of fiction should either say something
about its characters, in which case you can establish your own, or
it wouldn't need to, in which case you can use more or less
stereotypical characters to good effect. There are things you can
do with standard characters, but it seems to me that you need to
have some sort of ownership of the character for that to work.
For example, if you were to write a story centering about Spock
running a gambling casino somewhere in Engineering, and work it into
Spock's personality somehow, that could be very interesting, and
could benefit from the contrast with how we usually think of Spock.
Now, the average work of IF takes a good deal more work than the
average work of fanfic, and so I would think that it would be
just as easy to settle the IF into its own universe.
I'm not saying that there is no reason to write a story, conventional
or IF, about some students in a magical boarding school in a land
with a looming evil threat, I'm saying that you can write it and
file the serial numbers off without in general sacrificing quality.
>As I think, another motiviation for fanfic occurs to me -- wanting
>prople to read it.
Makes sense. The IF community is in an odd situation in that
respect, in that few people outside the community will play it,
and most of the community is going to at least try it if it
appeals to them at all. I don't think this motivation applies here.
>And in some communities, since the major subject of fanfic is TV
>series, fanfic contains a lot of pieces which were originally written
>with the initial intention of becoming submissions to the series.
I would expect the intention to be wildly optimistic in most cases,
but it does make sense. This also does not apply to IF, of course.
Not to mention that I don't find most TV shows to be high literature,
and so I wouldn't expect much quality from an unused episode.
--
David H. Thornley | If you want my opinion, ask.
da...@thornley.net | If you don't, flee.
http://www.thornley.net/~thornley/david/ | O-
L. Ross Raszewski
>Why? I've seen no end of good stories in all subgenres that used
>their own world. While the author needs to have a good picture of
>what the world it, and the author has to stick to it, it isn't
>necessary to present it as reference material. I'm open to
>counterexample, but I really doubt there are good short stories
>that cannot be told except in the context of a fleshed-out universe,
>and therefore that using somebody else's universe to tell a story
>in is probably a sign of bad writing.
See, maybe I'm misunderstanding, but I keep hearign this as something
like
fanficcer: I want to write a story about white houses.
anti-fanficcer: But stories about blue houses are just as good or
better!
ff: But I don't want to write a story about blue houses
af: Then you must be a poor writer; a good writer could write a good
story about a blue house.
>
>Moreover, I don't see Star Trek as a thoroughly fleshed-out universe.
>It consists of a lot of rather generic and inconsistent background
>material, and some characters that have been written for by lots
>of different people operating from guidelines. Most of the series
>was one-hour segments that in the end changed nothing, and could
>be shown in almost any order without losing consistency (although
>after Babylon 5 became popular Star Trek started having longer-running
>plots).
>
Well, leaving aside the fact that I don't have as much awe for plot
arcs as everyone else seems to (In practice, they seem to either
degenerate into Pointless Continuity references, or end up with a
soap-opera feel), there are certain dvantages in very techinical
areas. For one thing, they've staked a claim on a lot of the good
terminology; if you want to have a "warp drive", you're going to have
to call it something else or be accused of ripping them off. Your
"phasers" are eighter going to be "laser guns" or "blasters" or
something equally silly.
You also have a history, and a certain vision of the future. Frankly,
if you're not writing star trek, and you try to talk abotu a future
where mankind doesn't degenerate into cyberpunk dreariness, you'll be
called silly.
>You can drop a character into a Star Trek setting, but the settings
>are rather bland, and you still have to explain how the character
>fits into, and is affected by, the setting. If you can do a good
>job of this, you really don't need to use Star Trek. If not, your
>story probably isn't all that good.
If you can do a good job of integrating your character into the Star
Trek Universe it somehow goes without saying that you could integrate
him equally well into some novel universe? I don't buy that\, not
unless you're talking of novel universes which are highly similar to
Star Trek. And if you're goign to invent a novel universe which is
extremely similar to the ST universe, except in a few details for the
sake of originality, then why bother? If I'm going to expend the effort
to invent a new universe, it's going to be an *different* universe. If
the universe my story and characters work best in is the ST one, I'm
not goign to expend the effort to create a new universe which is just
like trek in all the important respects. That's a waste of effort I
should be putting into the storytelling.
>
>This applies less to more consistent universes such as Hogwarts
>or Middle Earth or Babylon 5, but even then I'd say that any story
>idea that can't stand apart from that universe is probably not
>all that good. Feel free to supply counterexamples.
There are several hundred Star Trek novels, which are, one could
argue, just authorized fanfic. Quite a few of them would not make
sense in a non-trek universe.
>
>Nor do I see any big advantage in having the characters more or
>less defined for you. A work of fiction should either say something
>about its characters, in which case you can establish your own, or
>it wouldn't need to, in which case you can use more or less
>stereotypical characters to good effect. There are things you can
>do with standard characters, but it seems to me that you need to
>have some sort of ownership of the character for that to work.
>For example, if you were to write a story centering about Spock
>running a gambling casino somewhere in Engineering, and work it into
>Spock's personality somehow, that could be very interesting, and
>could benefit from the contrast with how we usually think of Spock.
Consider Sherlock Holmes. In any given Sherlock Holmes story, very
little is said about the character. But over the course of reading the
canon, you gain a *very* detailed insite into the man. If one was
writing a one-off story about a detective with intense powers of
deduction, writing it about Sherlock Holmes would cause the astory to
have a profoundly different feel than making it about Mike, the
really impressive detective.
Also, so far, I find it strange that so many of the comments made
against fanfic could apply equally well to writers of the original
source material (less in the case of single-author projects, of
course) -- and I don't think many people want to argue that the
writers for a TV series are, of necessity, lazy and uncreative (the
writers of any particular series, admittedly).
>
>Now, the average work of IF takes a good deal more work than the
>average work of fanfic, and so I would think that it would be
>just as easy to settle the IF into its own universe.
>
I am unconvinced. I think some of this has to do with the idea of
the Idea as king; that the most important thing about a work is that
uit is based around a novel and interesting Idea. Personally, I'm much
more interested in the quality of storytelling.
>I'm not saying that there is no reason to write a story, conventional
>or IF, about some students in a magical boarding school in a land
>with a looming evil threat, I'm saying that you can write it and
>file the serial numbers off without in general sacrificing quality.
*this* is what I'm getting at. If you're going to write about
students at a magical boarding school in a land with a looming evil
threat, and you just file off the "harry potter" logo, then you're not
somehow being more creative or a better writer than the fanfic author,
and, frankly, if you make the universe your own bny only changing
trivialities, odds are you're goign to come off as
deriviative. (imho), It's far better to write fanfic than to write
fanfic that pretends it's not. (The Brickbuster syndrome)
>
>>As I think, another motiviation for fanfic occurs to me -- wanting
>>prople to read it.
>
>Makes sense. The IF community is in an odd situation in that
>respect, in that few people outside the community will play it,
>and most of the community is going to at least try it if it
>appeals to them at all. I don't think this motivation applies here.
>
Oh no, not here. Though if I write a star trek IF, there's a better
chance that people outside the community will play it.
I was really defending fanfic ingeneral when I wrote this.
>>And in some communities, since the major subject of fanfic is TV
>>series, fanfic contains a lot of pieces which were originally written
>>with the initial intention of becoming submissions to the series.
>
>I would expect the intention to be wildly optimistic in most cases,
>but it does make sense. This also does not apply to IF, of course.
>Not to mention that I don't find most TV shows to be high literature,
>and so I wouldn't expect much quality from an unused episode.
There are, of course, some realms where the fanfic has become
considerably higher in quality than the source material.
(and, as usual, I suspect that maybe a touch of the feeling toward
fanfic here has to do with arrogance; I wouldn't consider your opinion
toward the writing on TV to be uncommon here. Graham's 'Tempest'
adaptation isn't considered "the evil anathema which is fanfic",
because Shakespeare Is Sacred. But there was, IIRC, an IF adaptation
of a Doctor Who episode, which I doubt was met with the same respect.)
David Thornley
>
>See, maybe I'm misunderstanding, but I keep hearign this as something
>like
> fanficcer: I want to write a story about white houses.
> anti-fanficcer: But stories about blue houses are just as good or
> better!
> ff: But I don't want to write a story about blue houses
> af: Then you must be a poor writer; a good writer could write a good
> story about a blue house.
>
If you *want* to write a story set in the Star Trek universe, I
have nothing against that, but I'm not likely to read it without
first seeing a good review from somebody whose taste I trust.
If you want to write a good story, I don't see that using the Star
Trek universe is going to help you, it may lead you into bad
practices, and it isn't even legal. If you want to write a good
story in a universe similar to Star Trek, then go ahead and do
it.
>>Moreover, I don't see Star Trek as a thoroughly fleshed-out universe.
>
>Well, leaving aside the fact that I don't have as much awe for plot
>arcs as everyone else seems to (In practice, they seem to either
>degenerate into Pointless Continuity references, or end up with a
>soap-opera feel),
Hmmm. I didn't think Babylon 5 felt like a soap opera, and the continuity
certainly wasn't pointless. What I think made Babylon 5 different in
this regard was primarily the tight individual creative control.
there are certain dvantages in very techinical
>areas. For one thing, they've staked a claim on a lot of the good
>terminology; if you want to have a "warp drive", you're going to have
>to call it something else or be accused of ripping them off. Your
>"phasers" are eighter going to be "laser guns" or "blasters" or
>something equally silly.
>
Science fiction writers have been making up terms for devices that
propel ships at impossible speeds for a long time, and also terms
for futuristic sidearms. This wasn't limited to good writers, either;
even the bad ones coined terms that worked perfectly well.
>You also have a history, and a certain vision of the future. Frankly,
>if you're not writing star trek, and you try to talk abotu a future
>where mankind doesn't degenerate into cyberpunk dreariness, you'll be
>called silly.
>
By whom? While cyberpunk is enjoying a certain popularity, it certainly
isn't the whole field. (BTW, read some of Vernor Vinge for some
distinctly non-dreary cyberpunk if you will.) To name two series I
have been enjoying, neither Bujold's Barrayar books nor Weber's
Honor Harrington stories are cyberpunk or in dismal settings.
>If you can do a good job of integrating your character into the Star
>Trek Universe it somehow goes without saying that you could integrate
>him equally well into some novel universe? I don't buy that\, not
>unless you're talking of novel universes which are highly similar to
>Star Trek.
Obviously, a character can be conceived so it couldn't be integrated
well into the Instrumentality of Mankind, the Galactic Patrol, Gibson's
cyberpunk underground, or various other universes. So?
And if you're goign to invent a novel universe which is
>extremely similar to the ST universe, except in a few details for the
>sake of originality, then why bother?
I'd have several reasons. I wouldn't want to limit the marketability
of the story, for one thing. I wouldn't want to tempt myself to fall
into lazy habits. I always find other people's settings uncomfortable
to write in.
If I'm going to expend the effort
>to invent a new universe, it's going to be an *different* universe.
You do, of course, have to invent something much more complicated:
one or more characters. You have to invent that part of the universe
that the character(s) do things in for the duration of the story.
You really don't have to do much more than that to write a good
story.
If
>the universe my story and characters work best in is the ST one, I'm
>not goign to expend the effort to create a new universe which is just
>like trek in all the important respects. That's a waste of effort I
>should be putting into the storytelling.
>
Except for the waste of effort involved in specializing the ST universe
to what you need, which is similar to the effort involved in envisioning
a small piece of a universe that isn't ST but is similar. Alternately,
you can skip this process and just dump the character into somebody
else's universe without taking the trouble to understand how the character
fits in, in which case you're probably writing a bad story.
>>This applies less to more consistent universes such as Hogwarts
>>or Middle Earth or Babylon 5, but even then I'd say that any story
>>idea that can't stand apart from that universe is probably not
>>all that good. Feel free to supply counterexamples.
>
>There are several hundred Star Trek novels, which are, one could
>argue, just authorized fanfic. Quite a few of them would not make
>sense in a non-trek universe.
>
Could be. I stopped reading them very early on, because even the
best of them were inferior to what the writers were able to do
outside that universe. It could well be that some of them are
quite good, but my personal experience is that that isn't the way
to bet on a randomly selected ST novel. Would you care to
recommend some of the best by author and title?
>Consider Sherlock Holmes. In any given Sherlock Holmes story, very
>little is said about the character. But over the course of reading the
>canon, you gain a *very* detailed insite into the man.
Right. This is because Arthur Conan Doyle had Sherlock Holmes living
inside his head, and so he was able to write about him naturally,
having known him. All the non-Arthur Conan Doyle Holmes stories
I've read have been missing this sense of the "real" Holmes, and
that includes the Adrian Conan Doyle/John Dickson Carr collaborations.
If one was
>writing a one-off story about a detective with intense powers of
>deduction, writing it about Sherlock Holmes would cause the astory to
>have a profoundly different feel than making it about Mike, the
>really impressive detective.
>
To a certain extent, yes. However, if you wanted to write more
than one story, you'd find yourself limited. You'd have to
internalize Holmes, and then you'd find Holmes changing in
ways he wouldn't have in a Doyle story, since the inside of your
head is not the same as the inside of Doyle's. You'd wind up
either continuing to write about a stranger, or writing about
an imposter, somebody else wearing Holmes' cap and smoking his
pipe.
>Also, so far, I find it strange that so many of the comments made
>against fanfic could apply equally well to writers of the original
>source material (less in the case of single-author projects, of
>course) -- and I don't think many people want to argue that the
>writers for a TV series are, of necessity, lazy and uncreative (the
>writers of any particular series, admittedly).
>
That's what I meant about ownership. If you're just renting a
character, you've got to return him or her (or it or whatever)
intact, and this means you can't tear into that character and
find new things. If you're using your own character, you can
do that. You can realize things about that character and expose
them.
Suppose you wrote a ST:TNG story concerning what Dr. Crusher does
in sick bay. Would you be willing to go ahead and go into her
childhood fear of spiders, that continues today, and what that
had to do with her previous love life? The important experiment
she cheated on in med school, and how she almost got caught?
If so, you could write a pretty good story, but the fanfic I've
seen seems reluctant to work over the character to make you
see the character differently, as a more complete human being
(or whatever).
Again, feel free to correct my misconceptions.
>>Now, the average work of IF takes a good deal more work than the
>>average work of fanfic, and so I would think that it would be
>>just as easy to settle the IF into its own universe.
>
>I am unconvinced. I think some of this has to do with the idea of
>the Idea as king; that the most important thing about a work is that
>uit is based around a novel and interesting Idea. Personally, I'm much
>more interested in the quality of storytelling.
>
No, the idea is nice, but you'll get farther with a mediocre idea and
good characters than a great idea with mediocre characters. Ideas
are cheap and readily available. (Ideas that grab you may well be
rarer.) There hasn't been a really original plot that worked in
centuries, at least.
What you need to do to write a good story is have some compelling
reason to tell it. It may be the characters, or the situation, or
how they react, or an emerging plot. What's important had better
be unique in its own way, and what's not important is, well, not
important.
>>I'm not saying that there is no reason to write a story, conventional
>>or IF, about some students in a magical boarding school in a land
>>with a looming evil threat, I'm saying that you can write it and
>>file the serial numbers off without in general sacrificing quality.
>
>*this* is what I'm getting at. If you're going to write about
>students at a magical boarding school in a land with a looming evil
>threat, and you just file off the "harry potter" logo, then you're not
>somehow being more creative or a better writer than the fanfic author,
No, not "somehow". However, it gives you a license to change anything
to fit the story, or the school, or whatever. You can write a bad
story in any fashion. If you write a good story, it's because you
put something of yourself into it. If you're doing that, you are
limiting yourself by sticking to Hogwarts. What if you need a
character much like Snape, but not quite as nasty, and who teaches
outside? You can distort the story to fit Rowling's imagination,
and that's going to hurt the story. You can distort Snape and
jar the reader. You can, off-camera, send Professor Sprout on a
sabbatical, or injure her with a mandrake, and provide a substitute
Herbology professor. This is good, but now you're not dealing with
the established Hogwarts faculty, and if this is the important part
of the setting you're not using Hogwarts any more except for names.
>and, frankly, if you make the universe your own bny only changing
>trivialities, odds are you're goign to come off as
>deriviative. (imho), It's far better to write fanfic than to write
>fanfic that pretends it's not. (The Brickbuster syndrome)
>>
If what you're writing isn't going to amount to more than mucking
around in a world you don't know with characters that don't fit
into your head, then, yes, you may as well write fanfic. If you
do that, it will never be the best you are capable of writing
(assuming you can write a good story) because you will not have
the characters living the story in your head.
I've heard a rumor that Bujold started the Barrayar series as
Star Trek fanfic, and there's enough resemblance there to make
that seem very plausible to me. Suppose she did. By filing off
the serial numbers, she was able to make the universe her own,
to change as she needed to. She was able to bring up problems in
Betan society that she would never have gotten away with introducing
in the Federation, and was able to develop her Empire in ways that
are not particularly Klingon.
What she's got is a fascinating world, with fascinating characters,
confronted with different sorts of problems. It's hers, and she can
have it develop as it should. Nobody's going to come along and
say, "No, that's not how it really works on Barrayar". There are
probably people who know more than her about Klingons, and the
"reality" of Klingons is always subject to change in the next movie
or next TV episode, but nobody knows more than her about Barrayans,
and nobody can change them except her.
>Oh no, not here. Though if I write a star trek IF, there's a better
>chance that people outside the community will play it.
>
Assuming people outside the community will play IF at all.
>I was really defending fanfic ingeneral when I wrote this.
>
My experience differs from yours, although it is much smaller.
>There are, of course, some realms where the fanfic has become
>considerably higher in quality than the source material.
>(and, as usual, I suspect that maybe a touch of the feeling toward
>fanfic here has to do with arrogance; I wouldn't consider your opinion
>toward the writing on TV to be uncommon here. Graham's 'Tempest'
>adaptation isn't considered "the evil anathema which is fanfic",
>because Shakespeare Is Sacred. But there was, IIRC, an IF adaptation
>of a Doctor Who episode, which I doubt was met with the same respect.)
Shakespeare wrote very good stuff (as well as some not so good),
better than anything I've seen made for TV. While Shakespearean
interactive fanfic was not treated in the same way that, say,
Baywatch interactive fanfic would be, ISTM that it was more or less
agreed that "Tempest" (by Graham Nelson) didn't work as well as
"Tempest" by Shakespeare did, or for that matter as well as
"Curses" or even "Balances" did.
The only Doctor Who IF I remember hearing of was commercial, for
a system I never owned.
On the other hand, there have been games that could be described
almost as Lovecraft fanfic: Anchorhead and Awakening in particular.
By filing off the serial numbers, these games, Anchorhead in
particular, became free to develop as they should. Anchorhead is
generally considered to be excellent.
L. Ross Raszewski
>>
>Science fiction writers have been making up terms for devices that
>propel ships at impossible speeds for a long time, and also terms
>for futuristic sidearms. This wasn't limited to good writers, either;
>even the bad ones coined terms that worked perfectly well.
Do they? THe major alternatives I've seen for "warp drive" - 'star
drive' 'hyperdrive' 'jump drive' mostly sound cliched or overly
specific about the underlying technology. For "phaser" insert
"blaster" "laser" "stunner" "death ray", all of which sound pretty
dumb. And if you want matter transmission, "transporter" is
head-and-shoulders above most of the alternatives I've heard.
>Except for the waste of effort involved in specializing the ST universe
>to what you need, which is similar to the effort involved in envisioning
>a small piece of a universe that isn't ST but is similar. Alternately,
>you can skip this process and just dump the character into somebody
>else's universe without taking the trouble to understand how the character
>fits in, in which case you're probably writing a bad story.
I can't help wondering if it's just a matter of your having read a lot
of bad fanfic, or missing the good fanfic, or what, but I can't accept
"if this story wouldn't work as a non-fanfic, it's probably a bad
story"
>>There are several hundred Star Trek novels, which are, one could
>>argue, just authorized fanfic. Quite a few of them would not make
>>sense in a non-trek universe.
>>
>Could be. I stopped reading them very early on, because even the
>best of them were inferior to what the writers were able to do
>outside that universe. It could well be that some of them are
>quite good, but my personal experience is that that isn't the way
>to bet on a randomly selected ST novel. Would you care to
>recommend some of the best by author and title?
My personal favorite is 'Strangers from the Sky' by Margaret Wander
Bonano. The series of books "authored" by Shatner is also interesing,
for reasons I'll get to.
>>Also, so far, I find it strange that so many of the comments made
>>against fanfic could apply equally well to writers of the original
>>source material (less in the case of single-author projects, of
>>course) -- and I don't think many people want to argue that the
>>writers for a TV series are, of necessity, lazy and uncreative (the
>>writers of any particular series, admittedly).
>>
>That's what I meant about ownership. If you're just renting a
>character, you've got to return him or her (or it or whatever)
>intact, and this means you can't tear into that character and
>find new things. If you're using your own character, you can
>do that. You can realize things about that character and expose
>them.
>
>Suppose you wrote a ST:TNG story concerning what Dr. Crusher does
>in sick bay. Would you be willing to go ahead and go into her
>childhood fear of spiders, that continues today, and what that
>had to do with her previous love life? The important experiment
>she cheated on in med school, and how she almost got caught?
>If so, you could write a pretty good story, but the fanfic I've
>seen seems reluctant to work over the character to make you
>see the character differently, as a more complete human being
>(or whatever).
>
>Again, feel free to correct my misconceptions.
>
And I will. The novels (and this is a big point of contention)
frequently do this sort of thing; 'Best Destiny' by Diane Carey and
the SHatner novels discuss Kirk's younger years. In the unlicensed
universe, there's loads of "What did they do as young people" fic. The
Doctor who novels and fanfic even *regenerate* the Doctor and change
his entire nature.
The best works of Knight Rider fanfic also are willing to take great
liberties with the universe, killing or fundamentally Changing major
characters.
>If what you're writing isn't going to amount to more than mucking
>around in a world you don't know with characters that don't fit
>into your head, then, yes, you may as well write fanfic. If you
>do that, it will never be the best you are capable of writing
>(assuming you can write a good story) because you will not have
>the characters living the story in your head.
Leaving aside the matter of authors who actually can't write a good
story in an orginal universe (and whether or not I personally can write a good
story in either case), I think I'm finally starting to see what you're
getting at. And I will probably conceed that the best fanfics are
those willing to take liberties with the universe. Though I don't
entirely agree that being *unwilling* to take liberties with the
universe leads to a worse story. I'm inclined to recall a class I took
on philosophy and theatre. There's a very modern western tradition of
writing these wacky plays lacking plot, or relying on adlibbing, etc
to capture the (There isn't a good word to put here. Dionesian aspect
is the word I'd have used in the class). Now, interestingly, there's
a trend in eastern theatre which aspires to do the same thing, but it
does it by strict regimentation, such that the actor's every movement,
posture, and mannerism is rehearsed to the finest detail. (Yes. I'm
way off on a tangent). There is something interestign and worthwhile
about crafting a story that fits into the parameters set out by
someone else.
>
>>There are, of course, some realms where the fanfic has become
>>considerably higher in quality than the source material.
>>(and, as usual, I suspect that maybe a touch of the feeling toward
>>fanfic here has to do with arrogance; I wouldn't consider your opinion
>>toward the writing on TV to be uncommon here. Graham's 'Tempest'
>>adaptation isn't considered "the evil anathema which is fanfic",
>>because Shakespeare Is Sacred. But there was, IIRC, an IF adaptation
>>of a Doctor Who episode, which I doubt was met with the same respect.)
>
>Shakespeare wrote very good stuff (as well as some not so good),
>better than anything I've seen made for TV. While Shakespearean
>interactive fanfic was not treated in the same way that, say,
>Baywatch interactive fanfic would be, ISTM that it was more or less
>agreed that "Tempest" (by Graham Nelson) didn't work as well as
>"Tempest" by Shakespeare did, or for that matter as well as
>"Curses" or even "Balances" did.
>
Well no.
>The only Doctor Who IF I remember hearing of was commercial, for
>a system I never owned.
An old AGT game, and a more recent inform one. I think both were, at
some point, on the archive (since I can't imagine how else I'd have
got them)
Magnus Olsson
>like
> fanficcer: I want to write a story about white houses.
> anti-fanficcer: But stories about blue houses are just as good or
> better!
> ff: But I don't want to write a story about blue houses
> af: Then you must be a poor writer; a good writer could write a good
> story about a blue house.
You may not be misunderstanding, but I think you're using a false
analogy. It's more like
ff: I want to write a story about a white house.
aff: Sure, why not?
ff: About the white house in Zork I, to be precise.
aff: Then you must have a poor imagination - a good writer could invent
a house of his own.
That's still not saying that aff is right in this argument, and I'm
not arguing against fan-fiction - I can understand the attraction.
And my earlier post was a bit beside the point - it's not fanficcing
itself that puzzles me, it's the fact that there are some very talented
writers who apparently have no desire to write anything but fanfic -
but it's their decision, of course.
L. Ross Raszewski
There are some very talented writers who choose to write nothing but
IF. I can't understand why anyone would choose to write for such a
limited audience with no realistic chance of his work being
commerically published :-)
Magnus Olsson
L. Ross Raszewski <lrasz...@loyola.edu> wrote:
>On 15 Jan 2002 08:47:07 GMT, Magnus Olsson <m...@df.lth.se> wrote:
>>And my earlier post was a bit beside the point - it's not fanficcing
>>itself that puzzles me, it's the fact that there are some very talented
>>writers who apparently have no desire to write anything but fanfic -
>>but it's their decision, of course.
>
>IF. I can't understand why anyone would choose to write for such a
>limited audience with no realistic chance of his work being
>commerically published :-)
At times, I, too, find that hard to understand :-).
Seriously: most of the time I don't find it that hard to understand,
because writing IF is quite different from writing static fiction.
The difference between static fanfic and static original fiction
is much smaller. But obviously it's large enough for some people.
I'm very much aware that my problem with fanfic-only writers is *my*
problem, not theirs; the fact that *I* have difficulty understanding
doesn't mean that there's anything wrong with them or what they're
doing.
Another aspect of it is that the choice between IF and static fiction
is a choice of medium - like a choice between sculpture and painting
in oils. The choice between original fiction and fanfic is a matter
of originality. But then originality is overrated today.
michael chung
Alan DeNiro
> like
> fanficcer: I want to write a story about white houses.
> anti-fanficcer: But stories about blue houses are just as good or
> better!
> ff: But I don't want to write a story about blue houses
> af: Then you must be a poor writer; a good writer could write a good
> story about a blue house.
>
The color of house analogy just doesn't work for me, because it's not
as much an issue about content, but of poor vs. good writing to begin
with. Qualitatively. Thinking up your own characters, setting, and
developing a personal style builds and strenghtens "writing muscles"
that just aren't exercised when you have a prefab universe--not only
that, but a universe that relies heavily on a cliche-ridden visual
iconography.
>If I'm going to expend the effort
> to invent a new universe, it's going to be an *different* universe. If
> the universe my story and characters work best in is the ST one, I'm
> not goign to expend the effort to create a new universe which is just
> like trek in all the important respects.
I'm not buying this whole argument. The whole point of writing is
"expending effort."
> Well, leaving aside the fact that I don't have as much awe for plot
> arcs as everyone else seems to (In practice, they seem to either
> degenerate into Pointless Continuity references, or end up with a
> soap-opera feel), there are certain dvantages in very techinical
> areas. For one thing, they've staked a claim on a lot of the good
> terminology; if you want to have a "warp drive", you're going to have
> to call it something else or be accused of ripping them off. Your
> "phasers" are eighter going to be "laser guns" or "blasters" or
> something equally silly.
>
> You also have a history, and a certain vision of the future. Frankly,
> if you're not writing star trek, and you try to talk abotu a future
> where mankind doesn't degenerate into cyberpunk dreariness, you'll be
> called silly.
They might have laid claim to bad cliches. The way to avoid "ripping
them off" is to avoid bad cliches, which to no surprise is a good rule
for writing in general. How is the pseudoscience of a warp drive "good
terminology"?
The second paragraph about cyberpunk dreariness is very simplistic, if
not patently false. Silly? What? It doesn't boil down to Star Trek =
positivist future vs. Everything Else = dreary and dark. So if you
don't want to write anything dreary and dark, well, you'd better latch
onto a known franchise like Star Trek because it's just too hard to
think creatively about the future for yourself. Please.
> There are several hundred Star Trek novels, which are, one could
> argue, just authorized fanfic. Quite a few of them would not make
> sense in a non-trek universe.
It's not authorized fanfic. It's a publisher approaching a writer who
has some publishing history saying, "Here's $20,000. Go write a star
trek book." The writer might be a fan with a lowercase f, but not with
an uppercase F. It's a purely business proposition; the books are
basically literature turned into soulless commodity in the first
place. And yeah, I feel very strongly about this, that media tie-ins
have a parasitic relationship to science fiction--they take up shelf
space (more and more, actually), but give nothing back to the genre.
We could probably go on and on about this, but I'm not sure it'll
change either of our minds.
Alan
Magnus Olsson
Alan DeNiro <aland...@aol.com> wrote:
>> See, maybe I'm misunderstanding, but I keep hearign this as something
>> like
>> fanficcer: I want to write a story about white houses.
>> anti-fanficcer: But stories about blue houses are just as good or
>> better!
>> ff: But I don't want to write a story about blue houses
>> af: Then you must be a poor writer; a good writer could write a good
>> story about a blue house.
>>
>
>The color of house analogy just doesn't work for me, because it's not
>as much an issue about content, but of poor vs. good writing to begin
>with.
I think you really must separate the quality of the writing from,
well, what shall I call it, worldbuilding issues. Fan-fiction (as well
as other kinds of writing in a shared universe) can be very good
writing indeed.
>>If I'm going to expend the effort
>> to invent a new universe, it's going to be an *different* universe. If
>> the universe my story and characters work best in is the ST one, I'm
>> not goign to expend the effort to create a new universe which is just
>> like trek in all the important respects.
>
>I'm not buying this whole argument. The whole point of writing is
>"expending effort."
Surely, the whole point of writing is communication? Unless you're
writing just as an exercise, intending to stuff the result at the back
of your desk drawer for the rest of eternity.
I'd like to see it this way: if I really wanted to write a Trek story,
I'd do it - as I've said, I can see the attraction. However, I think
it would be more likely that I'd be just as happy with a Trek-like
setting. Filing off the serial numbers in such a case would not just
avoid legal trouble but would also give me greater freedom. I might
still be criticized by people who found the entire setup derivative,
so it's more likely that I'd deviate from Trek in all aspects but the
ones crucial to my story, but that would depend on the situation.
>> For one thing, they've staked a claim on a lot of the good
>> terminology; if you want to have a "warp drive", you're going to have
>> to call it something else or be accused of ripping them off. Your
>> "phasers" are eighter going to be "laser guns" or "blasters" or
>> something equally silly.
Well, Star Trek is so well-known, and so much held up as an example of
bad SF (in some circles) that anything even remotely resemblign Star
Trek runs the risk of being labeled a rip-off. Renaming a phaser will
still cause people to say "isn't that just a renamed Star Trek phaser?"
BTW, the phrases "laser guns" and "blasters" have different connotations
for me.
>> You also have a history, and a certain vision of the future. Frankly,
>> if you're not writing star trek, and you try to talk abotu a future
>> where mankind doesn't degenerate into cyberpunk dreariness, you'll be
>> called silly.
As a general claim, I think this is flat out wrong. In special cases:
well, some people will call optimistic futures silly, but the same people
are likely to sneer even more at Trek fanfic. And there are people who
absolutely hate cyberpunk and who think dystopic futures are silly.
David Thornley
>>>
>>Science fiction writers have been making up terms for devices that
>>propel ships at impossible speeds for a long time, and also terms
>>for futuristic sidearms. This wasn't limited to good writers, either;
>>even the bad ones coined terms that worked perfectly well.
>
>Do they? THe major alternatives I've seen for "warp drive" - 'star
>drive' 'hyperdrive' 'jump drive' mostly sound cliched or overly
>specific about the underlying technology.
And "warp drive" is neither?
For "phaser" insert
>"blaster" "laser" "stunner" "death ray", all of which sound pretty
>dumb.
"DeLameter"?
I think the issue here is that "warp drive" and "phaser" sound good
to you, through familiarization, and that you're just more comfortable
with these terms. I suppose that's a slight advantage to fanfic:
you're working in a familiar environment.
And if you want matter transmission, "transporter" is
>head-and-shoulders above most of the alternatives I've heard.
>
I don't think it's original to Star Trek either, although I'm
not quite coming up with a memory of a story calling it a
"transporter". "Transmat" and "Transplat" I can remember.
>I can't help wondering if it's just a matter of your having read a lot
>of bad fanfic, or missing the good fanfic, or what, but I can't accept
>"if this story wouldn't work as a non-fanfic, it's probably a bad
>story"
>
My experiences with fanfic are almost uniformly bad, and the good ones
aren't as good as I know the author could do elsewhere. Mind you,
I don't have a great deal of experience with fanfic, since there
are better things to do in life than seek out literature I have
reason to believe is generally bad.
>My personal favorite is 'Strangers from the Sky' by Margaret Wander
>Bonano. The series of books "authored" by Shatner is also interesing,
>for reasons I'll get to.
>
OK; I'll see if I can get hold of that one.
>The best works of Knight Rider fanfic also are willing to take great
>liberties with the universe, killing or fundamentally Changing major
>characters.
>
Which is what I'd expect.
Of course, if a story about Jean-Luc growing up is an interesting
story, it's likely to be interesting when written about Charles
Pierre, and if it's a dull story about Charles Pierre, it's likely
to not be a good story about Jean Luc. Unless, of course, the
story ties in with the Jean-Luc Picard seen on TV and in movies.
A story about Kathryn Janeway's (sp?) life as a teenage girl
may attract interest by being about Janeway, but that isn't the
same as literary quality.
>Leaving aside the matter of authors who actually can't write a good
>story in an orginal universe (and whether or not I personally can write a good
>story in either case), I think I'm finally starting to see what you're
>getting at. And I will probably conceed that the best fanfics are
>those willing to take liberties with the universe.
Right.
Though I don't
>entirely agree that being *unwilling* to take liberties with the
>universe leads to a worse story.
I'm not claiming a causal connection here, but it seems to me that
a story that is free to develop as it needs to is more likely to
be a good story, and that limiting it to the context of Star
Trek or something else is likely to stunt its potential.
(Of course, this didn't stop "Rosencratz and Guildenstern are Dead",
probably my favorite fanfic of all time, from being very good.
It's a matter of tendencies.)
I'm inclined to recall a class I took
>on philosophy and theatre. There's a very modern western tradition of
>writing these wacky plays lacking plot, or relying on adlibbing, etc
>to capture the (There isn't a good word to put here. Dionesian aspect
>is the word I'd have used in the class). Now, interestingly, there's
>a trend in eastern theatre which aspires to do the same thing, but it
>does it by strict regimentation, such that the actor's every movement,
>posture, and mannerism is rehearsed to the finest detail. (Yes. I'm
>way off on a tangent). There is something interestign and worthwhile
>about crafting a story that fits into the parameters set out by
>someone else.
>
Sorry, I don't quite see the connection here. These are about
forming works of theater with more or less initiative being
allowed the actors. It seems to me that the proper analogy
would have fanfic being an intended part of the universe, with
the author positively counting on certain features being filled
out by others. (Darkover could have been something like this;
more professional equivalents might be "Thieve's World" and
"Heroes in Hell".)
L. Ross Raszewski
>> See, maybe I'm misunderstanding, but I keep hearign this as something
>> like
>> fanficcer: I want to write a story about white houses.
>> anti-fanficcer: But stories about blue houses are just as good or
>> better!
>> ff: But I don't want to write a story about blue houses
>> af: Then you must be a poor writer; a good writer could write a good
>> story about a blue house.
>>
>
>The color of house analogy just doesn't work for me, because it's not
>as much an issue about content, but of poor vs. good writing to begin
This is true only because you've already assumed that fanfic is
qualitiatively worse.
>with. Qualitatively. Thinking up your own characters, setting, and
>developing a personal style builds and strenghtens "writing muscles"
>that just aren't exercised when you have a prefab universe--not only
>that, but a universe that relies heavily on a cliche-ridden visual
>iconography.
Well, leaving aside that there might be more than one way to work out
the "writing muscles", I've read fanfic which indtroduces novel
characters (Indeed, almost all but the worst fanfic does), the vast
majority of it exercizes a novel personal style, and some of it even
introduces new settings.
>
>>If I'm going to expend the effort
>> to invent a new universe, it's going to be an *different* universe. If
>> the universe my story and characters work best in is the ST one, I'm
>> not goign to expend the effort to create a new universe which is just
>> like trek in all the important respects.
>
>I'm not buying this whole argument. The whole point of writing is
>"expending effort."
But expending effort where it gets you something. If "expending
effort" was the *whole* point, any book which is difficult to write
is inherently "better". I'd have a great difficulty writing a novel
in spanish, but I doubt it would be one of my better works.
THe trick to writring well is expending effort where effort can be put
to use. I don't always want to reinvent the wheel just because
"inventing the wheel is a lot of effort and will strengthen my
wheel-inventign muscles"
>
>They might have laid claim to bad cliches. The way to avoid "ripping
>them off" is to avoid bad cliches, which to no surprise is a good rule
>for writing in general. How is the pseudoscience of a warp drive "good
>terminology"?
You've essentially promoted novelty above all else here. I won;t be
inclined to agree that novelty is nearly as important as some would suggest.
>
>The second paragraph about cyberpunk dreariness is very simplistic, if
>not patently false. Silly? What? It doesn't boil down to Star Trek =
>positivist future vs. Everything Else = dreary and dark. So if you
>don't want to write anything dreary and dark, well, you'd better latch
>onto a known franchise like Star Trek because it's just too hard to
>think creatively about the future for yourself. Please.
>
Well, no, but I've been told in several circles that "positive future
stories are juvenile and silly". But Star Trek circles don't think
that way.
>> There are several hundred Star Trek novels, which are, one could
>> argue, just authorized fanfic. Quite a few of them would not make
>> sense in a non-trek universe.
>
>
>It's not authorized fanfic. It's a publisher approaching a writer who
>has some publishing history saying, "Here's $20,000. Go write a star
>trek book." The writer might be a fan with a lowercase f, but not with
>an uppercase F. It's a purely business proposition; the books are
This isn't true. (Well, it probably is in the Star Trek universe, but
in other fandoms with media tie-ins, quite a few of the authors are
capital-F fans who are doing it as much out of love for the series as
for a living.)
>basically literature turned into soulless commodity in the first
>place. And yeah, I feel very strongly about this, that media tie-ins
>have a parasitic relationship to science fiction--they take up shelf
>space (more and more, actually), but give nothing back to the genre.
>We could probably go on and on about this, but I'm not sure it'll
>change either of our minds.
Well, you won't get me to conceed "give nothing back".
I suspect that the fundamental reason that fanfic is percieved as
havign a lower overall quality is that there's a lot more unpublished
fanfic out there for public scrutiny than unpublished original fiction
out there for public scrutiny. So the comparison between fanfic and
original fiction (and I no longer really like the term "original
fiction". Perhaps "novel" would be better.) tends to be weighted in
its consideration of novel fiction toward published material, which
has quality control that unpublished fiction doesn't.
Alan DeNiro
> In article <a1vkal$fj5$3...@foobar.cs.jhu.edu>,
> L. Ross Raszewski <lrasz...@loyola.edu> wrote:
> >See, maybe I'm misunderstanding, but I keep hearign this as something
> >like
> > fanficcer: I want to write a story about white houses.
> > anti-fanficcer: But stories about blue houses are just as good or
> > better!
> > ff: But I don't want to write a story about blue houses
> > af: Then you must be a poor writer; a good writer could write a good
> > story about a blue house.
>
> You may not be misunderstanding, but I think you're using a false
> analogy. It's more like
>
> ff: I want to write a story about a white house.
> aff: Sure, why not?
> ff: About the white house in Zork I, to be precise.
> aff: Then you must have a poor imagination - a good writer could invent
> a house of his own.
>
> That's still not saying that aff is right in this argument, and I'm
> not arguing against fan-fiction - I can understand the attraction.
But doesn't Shrapnel fall into this category then? I don't think
anyone would argue that the game displayed poor imagination simply
because it used the Zork house. Similarly, I don't see _Grendel_ as
Beowulf fanfic, or Jack Womack's _Elvissey_ as Elvis fanfic.
I WOULD, however, call _Prodly the Puffin_ (both the comic and the IF
game) as something close--or at least closer--to fanfic.
Using pastiche, or incorporating images from other work isn't the
issue. People have been doing that for ages. It's something deeper.
What it is, i'm not exactly sure, but I think it has to do something
with the fact that fanfic only feeds back into itself. It's the
difference between, say, the Replacements covering the KISS song
"Black Diamond"...and a KISS tribute band. The latter is mindless,
harmless fun--you get the costumes, the technically proficient covers,
but at root, it's a heartless, mechanical enterprise. There's nothing
new to it, there's nothing coming from the artist. The former is a
song on arguably one of the greatest rock albums of all time (the
album's title _Let it Be_ is a kind of pastiche itself). Both are
drawing from the same source material. But which makes a more
meaningful impact?
Alan
Adam Thornton
michael chung <michael...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>who is harry potter
Alias for John Galt.
Adam
Passenger Pigeon
wrote:
I was going to make this joke.
also, he is a seagull.
--
William Burke, passeng...@email.com if you say so
"Many people include in their signatures contact information, and perhaps
a joke or quotation." -- Simon Fraser Go Slugs!
http://www.passengerpigeon.net (not com, not org)
Magnus Olsson
>news:<a20qab$ogm$1...@news.lth.se>...
>> In article <a1vkal$fj5$3...@foobar.cs.jhu.edu>,
>> L. Ross Raszewski <lrasz...@loyola.edu> wrote:
>> >See, maybe I'm misunderstanding, but I keep hearign this as something
>> >like
>> > fanficcer: I want to write a story about white houses.
>> > anti-fanficcer: But stories about blue houses are just as good or
>> > better!
>> > ff: But I don't want to write a story about blue houses
>> > af: Then you must be a poor writer; a good writer could write a good
>> > story about a blue house.
>>
>> You may not be misunderstanding, but I think you're using a false
>> analogy. It's more like
>>
>> ff: I want to write a story about a white house.
>> aff: Sure, why not?
>> ff: About the white house in Zork I, to be precise.
>> aff: Then you must have a poor imagination - a good writer could invent
>> a house of his own.
>
Not really; both analogies above are just that - analogies,
not definitions of fanfic. The "house" in both analogies stands not
for just a house, but for the entire fictional universe.
>I don't think
>anyone would argue that the game displayed poor imagination simply
>because it used the Zork house.
No, because it uses the house as one element in an otherwise totally
original story, and the fact that the house is the house in Zork
falls in the category of allusion rather than plagiarism.
Poor imagination would be if Adam had needed a house in his game
and just copied the house from Zork because he couldn't be bothered
to invent his own.
And I don't really think fanfic writers have poor imagination.
A writer who chooses to copy _Star Trek_ because he is lazy may
be suffering from poor imagination; a writer who writes Trek fanfic
because he wants to explore the consequences of, to use a common theme,
a sexual relation between Kirk and Spock, doesn't do it because of
lack of imagination, anymore than Patricia Wrede showed poor imagination
when she set _Mairelon the Magician_ in an alternate Regency England
rather than in a made-up-from-scratch fantasy world (as she did with
most of her other books).
Come to think of it, perhaps that's the essence of fanfic: Treating
the Star Trek (or whatever) world the same way as a writer of
historical fiction treats the real past.
>It's the
>difference between, say, the Replacements covering the KISS song
>"Black Diamond"...and a KISS tribute band. The latter is mindless,
>harmless fun--you get the costumes, the technically proficient covers,
>but at root, it's a heartless, mechanical enterprise.
My impression is that good fanfic is much more like a cover band
than a tribute band: a new, personal interpretation of existing works
rather than just mindless re-creation.
Magnus Olsson
>stories are juvenile and silly". But Star Trek circles don't think
>that way.
That's a bit different from your original claim, which IIRC (it was
snipped in the post to which I'm replying) was that if you write
non-ST positive-future stories, they're considered silly, whereas
ST isn't, i.e. the perceived silliness would be a function of genre,
not of audience, which seems to be what you're saying now.
In other words, while the first "several circles" may consider
positive futures silly (which makes them sound like rather a miserable
bunch), the ST circles may very well like positive-future stories even
if they aren't ST fanfic. Or are you implying that trekkers just read
ST fanfic?
>>> There are several hundred Star Trek novels, which are, one could
>>> argue, just authorized fanfic. Quite a few of them would not make
>>> sense in a non-trek universe.
>>
>>It's not authorized fanfic. It's a publisher approaching a writer who
>>has some publishing history saying, "Here's $20,000. Go write a star
>>trek book." The writer might be a fan with a lowercase f, but not with
>>an uppercase F. It's a purely business proposition; the books are
>
>This isn't true. (Well, it probably is in the Star Trek universe, but
>in other fandoms with media tie-ins, quite a few of the authors are
>capital-F fans who are doing it as much out of love for the series as
>for a living.)
I have seen first-hand claims by professional, well-known authors that
they wrote media tie-ins out of love for the series, *despite* the hassle
of having to conform to strict guidelines. And these are authors
who were perfectly able to make a living on writing original stuff.
L. Ross Raszewski
>Come to think of it, perhaps that's the essence of fanfic: Treating
>the Star Trek (or whatever) world the same way as a writer of
>historical fiction treats the real past.
>
Ooh. That's good.
Aris Katsaris
"Alan DeNiro" <aland...@aol.com> wrote in message
news:254e3122.02011...@posting.google.com...
> Thinking up your own characters, setting, and
> developing a personal style builds and strenghtens "writing muscles"
> that just aren't exercised when you have a prefab universe--not only
> that, but a universe that relies heavily on a cliche-ridden visual
> iconography.
Interesting. What about Mary Stewart or Tennyson or T.H.White
who wrote about Merlin and Arthur? What about others who write
about their versions of mythological heroes? Or those who use Jack
the Ripper?
How is that so different from a fanfic writer, e.g. writing about
Wormtail's motivations in the Harry Potter universe?
Why must *new* characters be invented, when you have something to
say about old ones?
Aris Katsaris
David Thornley
Well, yes, but there are still some very significant differences.
The historical past is exceedingly detailed and varied. It is
possible to learn things about it that are certain, but that
almost nobody else knows about. There are all sorts of social
and economic structures that have been documented.
Star Trek, however, has no certainty aside from what has been
made readily available to everybody. It's not possible to
illuminate real characters from odd angles, such as (for
example) Fraser's Flashman books, or some of John Dickson
Carr's historical mysteries. The writer can go with what
everybody knows about the character, or make it up as he or
she goes along.
For these reasons, I'd suggest that fanfic is not really
comparable to historical fiction.
David Thornley
Aris Katsaris <kats...@otenet.gr> wrote:
>
>"Alan DeNiro" <aland...@aol.com> wrote in message
>news:254e3122.02011...@posting.google.com...
>> Thinking up your own characters, setting, and
>> developing a personal style builds and strenghtens "writing muscles"
>> that just aren't exercised when you have a prefab universe--not only
>> that, but a universe that relies heavily on a cliche-ridden visual
>> iconography.
>
>Interesting. What about Mary Stewart or Tennyson or T.H.White
>who wrote about Merlin and Arthur? What about others who write
>about their versions of mythological heroes? Or those who use Jack
>the Ripper?
>
Stewart and White.
They use characters that they themselves have invented, which conform
to some rather loose guidelines. Mary Stewart's Merlin is like nothing
else I have ever read about that character, in particular.
(There is historical evidence for the existence of Arthur, but
not in a form resembling any story I've read about him.)
I brought up "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead" in another
post. In this, Stoddard took a couple of minor characters, which
Shakespeare never defined, and defined them himself.
>How is that so different from a fanfic writer, e.g. writing about
>Wormtail's motivations in the Harry Potter universe?
>
Because you can't invent a new Wormtail nearly as well when you
have to stay consistent to the original. It's even worse when
the original author is still potentially writing about him.
Suddenly, what you're writing can be made distinctly wrong
by the next Harry Potter book, and the effect you're going for
destroyed.
It doesn't make a story about Wormtail automatically bad, but
it makes it harder to write a good one.
>Why must *new* characters be invented, when you have something to
>say about old ones?
>
If you're willing to adopt/steal/internalize the old characters,
go ahead. I do think it an advantage if they aren't already
well-defined, so that you can let the character grow in your
head without serious conflict.
Magnus Olsson
David Thornley <thor...@visi.com> wrote:
>In article <a23lgh$290$3...@foobar.cs.jhu.edu>,
>L. Ross Raszewski <lrasz...@loyola.edu> wrote:
>>On 16 Jan 2002 10:02:47 GMT, Magnus Olsson <m...@df.lth.se> wrote:
>>>Come to think of it, perhaps that's the essence of fanfic: Treating
>>>the Star Trek (or whatever) world the same way as a writer of
>>>historical fiction treats the real past.
>>
>>Ooh. That's good.
>
>Well, yes, but there are still some very significant differences.
>
>The historical past is exceedingly detailed and varied.
Yes. I forgot to add something along the lines of
"There's a crucial difference, though: the real past is infinitely
more detailed than any fictional world."
>For these reasons, I'd suggest that fanfic is not really
>comparable to historical fiction.
My simile was never intended to capture more than a few aspects
of fanfic.
Adam Thornton
David Thornley <thor...@visi.com> wrote:
>Suddenly, what you're writing can be made distinctly wrong
>by the next Harry Potter book, and the effect you're going for
>destroyed.
Hazy memory suggests _Splinter of the Mind's Eye_, Alan Dean Foster.
Adam
David Thornley
michael chung <michael...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>who is harry potter
To give you a straight answer, the hero of a series of children's
books written by J.K. Rowling, which have become incredibly
popular for reasons I don't entirely understand. (I mean, they
are good, but I didn't think they were the best fiction in print
nowadays.)
Rowling has written four out of a projected seven books, each
titled "Harry Potter and the <something or other>" and covering
one year of Harry's life in a British boarding school dedicated
to teaching its pupils how to use magic. While he studies at
Hogwarts, the old threat of the evil and powerful Lord Voldemort
tries to return.
FWIW, I've been a grad student in a department wracked with
political struggle, and I'm really impressed by how natural
the relations between the Hogwarts teachers seem.
Aris Katsaris
"David Thornley" <thor...@visi.com> wrote in message
news:8pj18.3129$Wf1.8...@ruti.visi.com...
> In article <a23ri7$llg$1...@usenet.otenet.gr>,
> Aris Katsaris <kats...@otenet.gr> wrote:
> >
> >How is that so different from a fanfic writer, e.g. writing about
> >Wormtail's motivations in the Harry Potter universe?
>
> Because you can't invent a new Wormtail nearly as well when you
> have to stay consistent to the original. It's even worse when
> the original author is still potentially writing about him.
> Suddenly, what you're writing can be made distinctly wrong
> by the next Harry Potter book, and the effect you're going for
> destroyed.
>
> It doesn't make a story about Wormtail automatically bad, but
> it makes it harder to write a good one.
Seems to me it's a bit of apples and oranges.
It's one kind of challenge creating a new character (as a sidenote
the few pieces of fanfiction I've myself written use new characters
- I've used the setting of other universes, Tolkien's Middle Earth and
'Gargoyles', to be exact, but not the already developed characters therein)
But it's also another kind of challenge to take a specific event or
character as described in some story by another, and try to see
it/him/her through your own viewpoint. What makes him tick?
And you also seem to me to be way too focused on the "characters"
thingy. A fanfic may use the characters of a show/story/etc, but it
may also use just the setting, as I've said. Or even if it uses the
characters, some fanfic are plot-oriented (why create new characters
*and* new fictional setting if you only have a plot-idea about already
created characters/setting?)
And occasionally it's even more complex. A friend of mine deciding
to combine a biblical story with the Gargoyles universe, for example:
http://www.gargoyles-fans.org/avmists/dec99_fic1.html
Okay, the guy could have created a new fantasy species and have him
interact in such a manner with the guy. But if *he* had created that
species then a) There'd be no point to how fitting the story is for this
species - ofcourse it's fitting! The guy made it fit! b) He'd spent a lot
of time describing said species which would probably be more
distracting than otherwise to the story's point.
--------
Aris Katsaris - kats...@otenet.gr
Home Page: http://users.otenet.gr/~katsaris/
joh
Alan> ... Thinking up
Alan> your own characters, setting, and developing a personal
Alan> style builds and strenghtens "writing muscles" that just
Alan> aren't exercised when you have a prefab universe--not only
Alan> that, but a universe that relies heavily on a cliche-ridden
Alan> visual iconography.
If you haven't read Flan O'Brien's At Swim-Two-Birds, you should (for
many reasons). The story is largely narrated by an author who
deliberately refuses to create new characters, or new anything. In
fact, the narrator himself is obviously ripped off from Joyce's
portrait of himself. Nonetheless, it's a very inventive book, and in
my opinion it's the funniest book alive.
j o h !
L. Ross Raszewski
>In article <4bdec02d.02011...@posting.google.com>,
>michael chung <michael...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>>who is harry potter
>
>To give you a straight answer, the hero of a series of children's
>books written by J.K. Rowling, which have become incredibly
>popular for reasons I don't entirely understand. (I mean, they
>are good, but I didn't think they were the best fiction in print
>nowadays.)
I gather it has somethign to do with the fact that kids like them
despite their not being the utter balls that is usually marketed to
kids.
Harry Potter and the Adjective of Noun, comming soon!
John W. Kennedy
> I have seen first-hand claims by professional, well-known authors that
> they wrote media tie-ins out of love for the series, *despite* the hassle
> of having to conform to strict guidelines. And these are authors
> who were perfectly able to make a living on writing original stuff.
Well, that's certainly true of the recent "Babylon 5" novels -- but
they're rather a special case. They were all outlined by J. Michael
Straczynski, and tell aspects of the "Babylon 5" epic that weren't in
the series, such as the life of Alfred Bester (the character) in the
years before and after the show, the unfortunate reign of Emperor Londo
Molari, and the story of what the Techno-mages were _really_ up to in
2259. So, in these cases, the writers are actually getting a chance to
fill in some empty corners of the great canvas.
On the other hand, the writers of "Star Trek" novels have relatively few
things to conform to, because it is Paramount's official policy that the
novels "never really happened".
--
John W. Kennedy
"Babylon 5: The Legend of the Rangers"
Coming to the Sci-Fi Channel in the USA, January 19, 2002
John W. Kennedy
> Interesting. What about Mary Stewart or Tennyson or T.H.White
> who wrote about Merlin and Arthur? What about others who write
> about their versions of mythological heroes? Or those who use Jack
> the Ripper?
> How is that so different from a fanfic writer, e.g. writing about
> Wormtail's motivations in the Harry Potter universe?
Very different, actually. In the first place, there have been many
contradictory versions of the Matter of Britain for as long as we have
records. White isn't writing about Tennyson's characters, Tennyson
isn't writing about Malory's characters, Malory is writing about the
characters of the Vulgate and Post-Vulgate only insofar as he is simply
retelling those older French works, and they aren't writing about
Chrétien's characters, who wasn't writing about Geoffrey's characters.
I'd have to say that writing about Wormtail's motivations is rather
rude. He's J. K. Rowling's character, and only she knows what those
motivations are.
> Why must *new* characters be invented, when you have something to
> say about old ones?
Because you don't. You only have something to say about your own
fantasy version of that character. Not to mention that, in the end,
this is a _fictional_ character; if you want to write literary
criticism, do so. Otherwise, you're being distinctly impertinent. (And
some writers are _very_ insulted by this kind of thing.)
And that is taking your argument seriously. It could also be argued
that this is all nothing but rationalization by someone who simply lacks
the talent to do anything original.
Georgina Bensley
> > Why must *new* characters be invented, when you have something to
> > say about old ones?
>
> Because you don't. You only have something to say about your own
> fantasy version of that character. Not to mention that, in the end,
> this is a _fictional_ character; if you want to write literary
> criticism, do so. Otherwise, you're being distinctly impertinent. (And
> some writers are _very_ insulted by this kind of thing.)
>
> And that is taking your argument seriously. It could also be argued
> that this is all nothing but rationalization by someone who simply lacks
> the talent to do anything original.
Yes, well, one could also argue that all writers-on-current-affairs are
distinctly impertinent for daring to ponder that political figures might
have other motives behind their publically stated ones, and that
photography-as-art is a lame cop-out by those who lack the talent to create
anything original, but this would be getting a bit silly, not to mention
rude.
... on the other hand, it's apparent to most people that photography and
painting are not the same thing and use a different set of skills, and
perhaps it should be equally apparent that fanfiction and original
fiction are not the same beast. For one thing, fanfic tends to be
'lighter' reading because of the effect the initial assumed familiarity
with the subject has on the amount of background required in the story
itself... I'm rambling again, pardon me.
__________________________________________________________________
Duke University Role-playing And Gaming Organization
http://www.duke.edu/web/DRAGO/
John W. Kennedy
>
> > > Why must *new* characters be invented, when you have something to
> > > say about old ones?
> >
> > Because you don't. You only have something to say about your own
> > fantasy version of that character. Not to mention that, in the end,
> > this is a _fictional_ character; if you want to write literary
> > criticism, do so. Otherwise, you're being distinctly impertinent. (And
> > some writers are _very_ insulted by this kind of thing.)
> >
> > And that is taking your argument seriously. It could also be argued
> > that this is all nothing but rationalization by someone who simply lacks
> > the talent to do anything original.
>
> Yes, well, one could also argue that all writers-on-current-affairs are
> distinctly impertinent for daring to ponder that political figures might
> have other motives behind their publically stated ones, and that
> photography-as-art is a lame cop-out by those who lack the talent to create
> anything original, but this would be getting a bit silly, not to mention
> rude.
It would also be, in both cases, a desperately false analogy. There
_is_ nothing "behind" Wormtail except J. K. Rowling. He's _hers_. Not
yours. Not anybody else's. Hers.
Fanfic done as a jeu d'esprit is one thing. Fanfic taken seriously is a
kind of rape.
Georgina Bensley
> On the other hand, the writers of "Star Trek" novels have relatively few
> things to conform to, because it is Paramount's official policy that the
> novels "never really happened".
I seem to recall the rules are roughly "Don't use any characters from the
animated series, don't kill anyone in the main cast, and don't create new
family members." (A few more than that, of course, but that's
more-or-less it.) And the books often contradict each other, and are
occasionally (Or often, I haven't read them all so I can't give ratios)
dreadfully bad.
The most amusing bit of it to me was that after the Trek movie that
suddenly gave Sulu a daughter, the task of explaining this fell to an
author who, while very good with Next Generation novels, had no feel for
Sulu at all... and not only that, whipped up the most unbelievable
cockamamie story imaginable for where this daughter came from (Amusing,
perhaps, but not very believable) and only related it to established
continuity by claiming Sulu was too much of a stone bastard to visit
her... All in all, it was not a good book at all, and then they used the
sales figures of that book to explain why they weren't doing any more
Captain Sulu novels...
A fanfic explanation of Demora could only do better!
Aris Katsaris
"John W. Kennedy" <jwk...@attglobal.net> wrote in message
news:3C4666F3...@attglobal.net...
> I'd have to say that writing about Wormtail's motivations is rather
> rude. He's J. K. Rowling's character, and only she knows what those
> motivations are.
"Rude"? Actually I did think it rather rude when Star Trek included
Mark Twain in one of their episodes. But that's probably because I hated
the way they used him, not the idea that they used him at all.
> > Why must *new* characters be invented, when you have something to
> > say about old ones?
>
> Because you don't. You only have something to say about your own
> fantasy version of that character.
Well, duh. And when I wrote a piece of interactive fiction about Jean D'Arc
I had something to say about my fantasy version of her character. And when
I wrote something about Minos and Pasiphae I had something to say about
my fantasy versions of *those* characters.
> Not to mention that, in the end,
> this is a _fictional_ character; if you want to write literary
> criticism, do so. Otherwise, you're being distinctly impertinent.
If I'm impertinent in doing something to a fictional character, imagine
how much more impertinent I was by writing fiction about real historical
figures...
> (And some writers are _very_ insulted by this kind of thing.)
And some other writers also feel flattered. But you don't
care about that, do you now?
> And that is taking your argument seriously. It could also be argued
> that this is all nothing but rationalization by someone who simply lacks
> the talent to do anything original.
Why, thank you very much. As far as I can tell *I* am a rather
mediocre writer - but I'm not defending only myself, I'm also
defending several *extremely* talented individuals IMAO of
many fandoms - some of them my friends. They've written beautiful
stories with deep characterizations, intriguing plots, pathos and
drama - none of which is made less by their being situated in other
people's universes.
And it could of course also be argued that your comments are nothing
but the insane rantings by someone who lacks the talent to write
anything in either an original or borrowed universe.
Aris Katsaris
Aris Katsaris
> > Yes, well, one could also argue that all writers-on-current-affairs are
> > distinctly impertinent for daring to ponder that political figures might
> > have other motives behind their publically stated ones, and that
> > photography-as-art is a lame cop-out by those who lack the talent to create
> > anything original, but this would be getting a bit silly, not to mention
> > rude.
>
> It would also be, in both cases, a desperately false analogy. There
> _is_ nothing "behind" Wormtail except J. K. Rowling. He's _hers_. Not
> yours. Not anybody else's. Hers.
Well once again "Duh!" It's also written in the disclaimers in front of every
fanfic "Those characters belong to JKR. These characters belong to me. etc,etc"
> Fanfic done as a jeu d'esprit is one thing. Fanfic taken seriously is a
> kind of rape.
No, *plagiarism* is a kind of rape. Fanfic isn't. You do understand how much
fanfic writers love and appreciate the original, don't you? Fan fiction is a
sign
of *love* and I can only feel pity those (very few as far as I know) paranoiac
authors who object to the existence of any fanfiction about their works. Spider
Robinson is one of them, but I don't know others right now.
Aris Katsaris
Adam Thornton
Noun of Other-Noun, surely?
Adam
Aris Katsaris
"Adam Thornton" <ad...@fsf.net> wrote in message
news:a27d67$ala$1...@news.fsf.net...
And it was "Noun's Noun" in the first book. :-)
Aris Katsaris
Adam Thornton
John W. Kennedy <jwk...@attglobal.net> wrote:
>Fanfic done as a jeu d'esprit is one thing. Fanfic taken seriously is a
>kind of rape.
Oh, please.
"A bad thing," sure. "Theft," maybe.
But don't trivialize the word "rape" this way, please. And don't go
appealing to the word's Latin roots to claim that theft and rape are the
same thing either.
And yes, I feel the same way about the phrase "relay-rape" when applied
to MTAs.
Adam
Adam Thornton
Aris Katsaris <kats...@otenet.gr> wrote:
>No, *plagiarism* is a kind of rape. Fanfic isn't. You do understand how much
>fanfic writers love and appreciate the original, don't you? Fan fiction is a
>sign
>of *love* and I can only feel pity those (very few as far as I know) paranoiac
>authors who object to the existence of any fanfiction about their works. Spider
>Robinson is one of them, but I don't know others right now.
And since I smacked John down, I'm going to do it to you too.
Plagiarism *also* isn't rape. It's not a nice thing, but it isn't rape.
Robinson objects to fanfic? I seem to recall that the intro to one of
the later (read: sucky) Callahan books had some not entirely negative
things to say about alt.callahans.
Adam
Aris Katsaris
"John W. Kennedy" <jwk...@attglobal.net> wrote in message
news:3C470BC7...@attglobal.net...
> Georgina Bensley wrote:
> >
> > Yes, well, one could also argue that all writers-on-current-affairs are
> > distinctly impertinent for daring to ponder that political figures might
> > have other motives behind their publically stated ones, and that
> > photography-as-art is a lame cop-out by those who lack the talent to create
> > anything original, but this would be getting a bit silly, not to mention
> > rude.
>
> It would also be, in both cases, a desperately false analogy. There
> _is_ nothing "behind" Wormtail except J. K. Rowling. He's _hers_. Not
> yours. Not anybody else's. Hers.
As a sidenote, do you feel the same about the use of the characters of Sherlock
Holmes and Watson in movies other than the original stories (aka "Sherlock
Holmes"-fanfic) or even Spielberg's "Hook" ("Peter Pan"-fanfic)?
Aris Katsaris
John W. Kennedy
>
> "John W. Kennedy" <jwk...@attglobal.net> wrote in message
> news:3C470BC7...@attglobal.net...
> > > Yes, well, one could also argue that all writers-on-current-affairs are
> > > distinctly impertinent for daring to ponder that political figures might
> > > have other motives behind their publically stated ones, and that
> > > photography-as-art is a lame cop-out by those who lack the talent to create
> > > anything original, but this would be getting a bit silly, not to mention
> > > rude.
> >
> > It would also be, in both cases, a desperately false analogy. There
> > _is_ nothing "behind" Wormtail except J. K. Rowling. He's _hers_. Not
> > yours. Not anybody else's. Hers.
>
> Well once again "Duh!" It's also written in the disclaimers in front of every
> fanfic "Those characters belong to JKR. These characters belong to me. etc,etc"
>
> > Fanfic done as a jeu d'esprit is one thing. Fanfic taken seriously is a
> > kind of rape.
>
> No, *plagiarism* is a kind of rape.
No, plagiarism is a kind of theft.
> Fanfic isn't. You do understand how much
> fanfic writers love and appreciate the original, don't you? Fan fiction is a
> sign
> of *love*
'sfunny. That's _exactly_ what a lot of rapists say....
> and I can only feel pity those (very few as far as I know) paranoiac
> authors who object to the existence of any fanfiction about their works. Spider
> Robinson is one of them, but I don't know others right now.
Joe Straczynski, for one.
John W. Kennedy
>
> In article <3C470BC7...@attglobal.net>,
> John W. Kennedy <jwk...@attglobal.net> wrote:
> >Fanfic done as a jeu d'esprit is one thing. Fanfic taken seriously is a
> >kind of rape.
>
> Oh, please.
>
> "A bad thing," sure. "Theft," maybe.
>
> But don't trivialize the word "rape" this way, please. And don't go
> appealing to the word's Latin roots to claim that theft and rape are the
> same thing either.
Don't assume that I don't choose my words carefully. I said precisely
what I meant.
John W. Kennedy
> As a sidenote, do you feel the same about the use of the characters of Sherlock
> Holmes and Watson in movies other than the original stories (aka "Sherlock
> Holmes"-fanfic)
Conan Doyle has been dead for a long time, and he never took Holmes
seriously as literature. (His words to Gillette are telling.) I
confess I feel a little queasy about "The Beekeeper's Apprentice", and I
suspect, perhaps hope, that the first draft thereof dates back to Laurie
King's teenage or pre-teen years.
> or even Spielberg's "Hook" ("Peter Pan"-fanfic)?
For better or worse, the rights were given to Spielberg to do it. But
in the end, I think it a wholly unnecessary movie that tramples on a
structure that was never all that firm to begin with.
John W. Kennedy
> Why, thank you very much. As far as I can tell *I* am a rather
> mediocre writer - but I'm not defending only myself, I'm also
> defending several *extremely* talented individuals IMAO of
> many fandoms - some of them my friends. They've written beautiful
> stories with deep characterizations, intriguing plots, pathos and
> drama - none of which is made less by their being situated in other
> people's universes.
In other words, they're slash and or Mary-Sue.
> And it could of course also be argued that your comments are nothing
> but the insane rantings by someone who lacks the talent to write
> anything in either an original or borrowed universe.
I'm the official novelizer of the Kingdom of Somerset, and am working on
an IF episode. (http://www.NJKingdom.com) Come to think of it, what is
this thread doing in RGIF? It belongs in RAIF.
Aris Katsaris
> Aris Katsaris wrote:
> > As a sidenote, do you feel the same about the use of the characters of
Sherlock
> > Holmes and Watson in movies other than the original stories (aka "Sherlock
> > Holmes"-fanfic)
>
> Conan Doyle has been dead for a long time, and he never took Holmes seriously
as literature.
LOL!
> > or even Spielberg's "Hook" ("Peter Pan"-fanfic)?
>
> For better or worse, the rights were given to Spielberg to do it.
Ah, so it is now a legal issue rather than a moral issue? Whatever.
> But
> in the end, I think it a wholly unnecessary movie that tramples on a
> structure that was never all that firm to begin with.
But is it "rape"?
Aris Katsaris
Aris Katsaris
Really? Weird. A brief google search gave me this:
*****************
I've asked that fans *not* write any fan fiction set in the B5 universe
while the show is on the air. Remember, most ST fanfic began after the
show was over, to keep those characters alive. We're still around.
[snip]
It seems to me that if someone wants to write B5 fanfic, it's because that
fan likes the show, appreciates what's done, and respects those who
created it. And that selfsame fan would not want to jeapordize the
continued existence of that show. And would, therefore, honor this
request from those who make it for the duration of the show.
*****************
Also this:
******
In terms of B5 fanfic, I've always asked that it basically be kept away from
where I can see it by stumbling across it.
*******
Both of these are quite different to "object to the existence of any fanfiction
about their works".
Aris Katsaris
Aris Katsaris
> Aris Katsaris wrote:
> > Why, thank you very much. As far as I can tell *I* am a rather
> > mediocre writer - but I'm not defending only myself, I'm also
> > defending several *extremely* talented individuals IMAO of
> > many fandoms - some of them my friends. They've written beautiful
> > stories with deep characterizations, intriguing plots, pathos and
> > drama - none of which is made less by their being situated in other
> > people's universes.
>
> In other words, they're slash and or Mary-Sue.
ROTFL! No and no, thank you. No Mary Sues in my favourite fanfics,
and no slash either.
Thanks for that sentence though. You've really proven your bias.
Aris Katsaris
Adam Thornton
John W. Kennedy <jwk...@attglobal.net> wrote:
>Adam Thornton wrote:
>> In article <3C470BC7...@attglobal.net>,
>> John W. Kennedy <jwk...@attglobal.net> wrote:
>> >Fanfic done as a jeu d'esprit is one thing. Fanfic taken seriously is a
>> >kind of rape.
>> appealing to the word's Latin roots to claim that theft and rape are the
>> same thing either.
>Don't assume that I don't choose my words carefully. I said precisely
>what I meant.
Then please define "rape" in your lexicon, because it clearly means
something very different to you than what I take it to mean.
Adam
David Glasser
Well, only in the British version; in America, it was "Noun's Noun."
--
David Glasser
ne...@davidglasser.net http://www.davidglasser.net/
Matthew Russotto
John W. Kennedy <jwk...@attglobal.net> wrote:
>
>Joe Straczynski, for one.
Considering he ripped off everyone from Homer to Bester to Tolkien, he's
got a lot of frigging nerve.
--
Matthew T. Russotto mrus...@speakeasy.net
=====
Dmitry is free, but the DMCA survives. DMCA delenda est!
"Extremism in defense of liberty is no vice, and moderation in pursuit
of justice is no virtue."
Alan DeNiro
> A writer who chooses to copy _Star Trek_ because he is lazy may
> be suffering from poor imagination; a writer who writes Trek fanfic
> because he wants to explore the consequences of, to use a common theme,
> a sexual relation between Kirk and Spock, doesn't do it because of
> lack of imagination, anymore than Patricia Wrede showed poor imagination
> when she set _Mairelon the Magician_ in an alternate Regency England
> rather than in a made-up-from-scratch fantasy world (as she did with
> most of her other books).
Warning. Long post.
My point (and it might be an apples and oranges thing) is that the act
of exploring a sexual relation between Kirk and Spock is quite
different from writing about, say, an alternate Regency England. (I
haven't read the book you're talking about, so I'll use that general
setting for my example). The former is inherently recursive--yes, you
might say that there is some character exploration going on. But it is
at best, writing about a franchise. However historically based a
fantastic work might be, writing about an alternate Regency England is
not writing about a franchise. It's a matter of the writing process
vs. writing about a product.
I think the base of my dissension about fanfic is the whole
intellectual property issue. It DOES matter, in a psychological sense,
of the legitimacy of an art form for me. Even with the best
intentions, even with well-meaning fannish love, it is at root
piratanical of a piece of intellectual property that itself is
piratanical (for reasons I'll get into later).
Amateur diversion? A dalliance never to see the light of day? OK,
maybe I have no problem with that. But it is ultimately an act of
being a fan, not of being a writer.
[An aside: Here's another view of it, one that ties more directly into
fandom. Can we see fanfic as its own form of a "guerilla reading"?
More of an act of INTERPRETATION about a particular show (teasing out
subtexts, providing alternate readings THROUGH the creation of a text)
with aims quite different from creating an original work of art (even
one, a la _Grendel_ or the Wrede example above, that uses source
material other than their own)?]
To consolidate a thread or two--I know a few people responded to my
"writing muscles" post, and my contention that writing takes work. It
was said that, if that were the case, then the most valuable work
would be the stuff that had the most struggle in its creation. That's
not what I said, or meant.
It goes back to the process of writing. I'll say--for the fourth time,
I guess--that developing one's own personal style is
subsumed/irrelevant in fanfic. It's crucial in writing fiction, and in
some ways nothing matters more. Every writer has to develop their own
personal lexicon, the intersection of an internal and external
language. Not because it's a literary affectation, but because it's
necessary; a representation of something deeply ingrained in the
psyche, and so personal that it hints at why a person would bother to
write in the first place. For a particular story, yes, it might flow
like water. But this ultimately takes careful attention to language
and character, built up through an apprenticeship to writing. There is
a terminal limit--a very immediate one, I think--with this type of
writerly development when it comes to fanfic.
This process is not agony, it's not a matter of self-inflicted pain--I
don't wnat to be misconstrued again. For many writers, they could not
possibly do anything else that would give them as much internal
satisfaction, as that they receive when they write. Even a genre of
writing such as science fiction, it's most enduring work has a deeply
personal iconography; it's symbolism at heart is rooted in why we tell
stories in the first place: to better understand who we are and where
we are going. The stories about aliens, about exploration, about the
triumphs and tribulations of science, when done well, are all
necessary because they are ultimately humanizing (and moving, because
of it). They are more about who we are as people rather than the
surface machinations of the "props" of the genre.
Sure, fanfic seems to quack like a duck, so to speak. It has the look
and feel of real prose. It might even make gestures towards
characterization. But it is a simulacrum of the concerns of
storytelling; its intentions are none of the ones described in the
previous paragraph. Fanfic's heart is squarely located in a media
product.
And there's the rub.
We live in an age where products are thrust upon us, where fiction is
turning into commodity, where we're sacrificing a written literacy for
a bastardized form of visual literacy. (This is one of the reasons I
love IF to begin with.) But fanfic to me is problematic because of
this. It inherently is tied to a commodification. We need more than
ever stories that are subversive and innovative, that can knock
people's socks off. We need writing that creates its own mythologies.
And to those who say, "well, why can't writing be entertainment, why
can't it be mindless, what's wrong with popcorn books or popcorn
fanfic"...well, there's nothing wrong with it, to a point. We've
always had our penny dreadfuls. I realize that the technologies of the
cheaply-printed pamphlet serials of the Victorian era helped foster
the need and hunger for literacy, and helped democratize writing in
general. But the penny dreadfuls are subsuming nearly everything now,
and it's accelerated by the ENTIRE IDEA of a media tie-in, authorized
by a publisher or fanfic, it doesn't matter.
This commodification becomes problematic, and my business, because
half the f-ing shelves are full of Star Trek books! And Dr. Who books.
And Earth:Final Conflict books. And Star Wars books. And Magic the
Gathering books. And, and, and. And it's all crap! Do you think the
shareholders at fucking Viacom--or the distributors at Ingram, for
that matter--really care about creating a citizenry that can think for
itself? Question things? Read critically? For all the veneer of
"progress" that these television shows provide--for whatever their
worth AS television--it's poisonous to a culture of the written word.
After all, novels are just small gems on the large diadem of these
large media corporations (or a fly squished against the dashboard of a
Mercedes going 90 mph, depending on how you want to look at it).
And yes (fending off something I know will probably come)--a Pynchon
or Alfred Bester novel published by Penguin or Random House might be
feeding the bottom line of a large company...ultimately. But a work of
quality, of real feck and vision counters this to a great degree, I
think, if it's able to get out there to its ideal audience, and make a
cultural impact. The technologies of publishing aren't the problem per
se--it's the fact that they're out of balance. A large publisher will
leave a giant like Pynchon alone, because he can still move 100K of a
book. But he got his roots and his start in an earlier era. What about
the next Pynchon? The next Bester? The next Tiptree? Where are they
going to get published in this climate? Who's going to be the next
innovative midlist author that's going to be squeezed out of shelving
space?
And yes, to reiterate, fanfic and the media tie-ins are part and
parcel, intricately tied together in this dilemma. And no, fanfic
isn't subverting this power structure in any way shape or form. You're
not "sticking it to the man." If anything, it's exacerbating the
problem even more.
This might be a very old fashioned way of looking at writing. But I
hope it better explains as to where I'm coming from.
Alan
-------
Alan DeNiro
http://www.taverners-koans.com/ratbastards/alan.html
Lindy
>> > Why, thank you very much. As far as I can tell *I* am a rather
>> > mediocre writer - but I'm not defending only myself, I'm also
>> > defending several *extremely* talented individuals IMAO of
>> > many fandoms - some of them my friends. They've written beautiful
>> > stories with deep characterizations, intriguing plots, pathos and
>> > drama - none of which is made less by their being situated in other
>> > people's universes.
>>
>> In other words, they're slash and or Mary-Sue.
>
>ROTFL! No and no, thank you. No Mary Sues in my favourite fanfics,
>and no slash either.
>
>Thanks for that sentence though. You've really proven your bias.
Yes, there's very little point in continuing that discussion. :)
Ben Haines
> I think the base of my dissension about fanfic is the whole
> intellectual property issue. It DOES matter, in a psychological sense,
> of the legitimacy of an art form for me. Even with the best
> intentions, even with well-meaning fannish love, it is at root
> piratanical of a piece of intellectual property that itself is
> piratanical (for reasons I'll get into later).
I agree with you that appropriation of the Star Trek or X Files
universe is not the same as, say, _Grendel_'s use of the _Beowulf_
story. After all, Grendel used the framework of Beowulf to tell a
very different *kind* of story, one even more different from
Beowulf than _The Wind Done Gone_ was from _Gone with the Wind_.
Grendel wasn't simply riffing on an established cliche or
"adding-on" to a franchised universe.
But fanfic isn't =supposed= to be like _Grendel_. Its goals are
different. It's not a heroic act of original creation, but it
doesn't try to be. Fanfic is going over old ground, but from a
new direction, providing (to awkwardly mix an already cliche'd
metaphor) a new lens through which to see somebody elses' story.
> [An aside: Here's another view of it, one that ties more directly into
> fandom. Can we see fanfic as its own form of a "guerilla reading"?
> More of an act of INTERPRETATION about a particular show (teasing out
> subtexts, providing alternate readings THROUGH the creation of a text)
> with aims quite different from creating an original work of art (even
> one, a la _Grendel_ or the Wrede example above, that uses source
> material other than their own)?]
I agree completely. Jenny Holzer's "Truisms" worked entirely by
taking old sayings and giving them new contexts; minimal "effort",
minimal "style" required on the part of the artist. But they're
interesting because they give a new means of access to old
material. Perspective changes.
Not that all fanfic does this. That would be far too bold a claim.
But the =potential= is there, I think; the form of fanfic itself
isn't worthless, whatever the current production values are.
> Sure, fanfic seems to quack like a duck, so to speak. It has the look
> and feel of real prose. It might even make gestures towards
> characterization. But it is a simulacrum of the concerns of
> storytelling; its intentions are none of the ones described in the
> previous paragraph. Fanfic's heart is squarely located in a media
> product.
Yes. But does this really damn it so thoroughly? (And here we are
back at Harry Potter... Is this where the thread started?)
> general. But the penny dreadfuls are subsuming nearly everything now,
> and it's accelerated by the ENTIRE IDEA of a media tie-in, authorized
> by a publisher or fanfic, it doesn't matter.
But you can't simply say "read Good Books(tm) or read nothing
at all". There are way too many people, at least in the USA, who
are just barely literate. Most adults read at a 9th grade level.
If they're out there at their local Barnes&Noble buying the latest
Harry Potter book--well, I'd rather see that than nothing. For
myself, I'll shop at my local independent, who =does= stock the
subversive, innovative, small-presses books. And when someone
says they liked HP and are looking for something else to read,
I'll try and get them to go there too. But reading is a
worthwhile thing to pursue, whether it's X-files fanfiction or
David Foster Wallace.
Of course, some of those people will read the fanfic or the
tie-ins and stop there. They'll go back to their TV's to catch
the hot new series, and read =its= tie-in when it comes out. But
what can you do? Those are the same people who, if you took away
the fanfic amd the penny dreadfuls, wouldn't read anything at all.
That seems like a worse idea to me than letting them continue as
they are.
> itself? Question things? Read critically? For all the veneer of
> "progress" that these television shows provide--for whatever their
> worth AS television--it's poisonous to a culture of the written word.
But, sad as it is, we just don't have a culture of the written
word anymore. It's not necessary. Telephone, TV, the
Internet--there's no =need= to read beyond a rudimentary level.
And there's no going back. You can't wipe it all out and return
to reading the Bible by kerosene lamp every night...not when the
new season of Real World(tm) is starting on MTV this week.
Literature has become an art form, not an obligation.
You alluded earlier to IF, and I think the comparison is accurate.
At one time, text games were all there was. =Everybody= was into
them. Now, it's an art, practiced in relatively rarified circles
by a small group of devotees. This isn't necessarily a Bad Thing.
Authors these days are making better and better IF, taking more
risks and developing the theory and practice far beyond what would
have been possible if the lowest common denominator of marketing
had been in control. Same with books. You've got the Quake XIV
books, and you've got the masterpieces. As long as the devotees
keep introducing new people to the good stuff, writing won't die
out as an art. But it will never be the same as it was, 'cause
the world isn't the same as it was.
> This might be a very old fashioned way of looking at writing. But I
> hope it better explains as to where I'm coming from.
It's the way a Real Writer(tm) =should= look at writing, I think.
It's the niche I'd like to occupy, if I ever get good enough to
call myself a writer. But it's not for everybody, and it's not
necessarily better. (Ugh. Wishy-washy relativism? Perhaps.) It's
all about where you draw the line; some people draw it at major
presses, some draw it at Oprah's Book Club, and some at the latest
Star Trek novel. *shrug* Who's to say?
-b.h.
beco...@earthlink.net
L. Ross Raszewski
Yes. I just thought "adjective of noun" sounded better.
L. Ross Raszewski
<jwk...@attglobal.net> wrote:
>
>> or even Spielberg's "Hook" ("Peter Pan"-fanfic)?
>
>For better or worse, the rights were given to Spielberg to do it. But
>in the end, I think it a wholly unnecessary movie that tramples on a
>structure that was never all that firm to begin with.
>
So... Does this mean that legality has some relationship to quality or
worthwhileness? (I'm momentarily reminded of the ceaseless
copyright/abandonware threads where one side always argues the
illegality as if the other side is claiming something is legal that
isn't, while the other side is actually arguing the morality of the
law, as if the other side were claiming that something *should be*
illegal that wasn't.)
L. Ross Raszewski
>
>My point (and it might be an apples and oranges thing) is that the act
>of exploring a sexual relation between Kirk and Spock is quite
>different from writing about, say, an alternate Regency England. (I
>haven't read the book you're talking about, so I'll use that general
>setting for my example). The former is inherently recursive--yes, you
>might say that there is some character exploration going on. But it is
>at best, writing about a franchise. However historically based a
>fantastic work might be, writing about an alternate Regency England is
>not writing about a franchise. It's a matter of the writing process
>vs. writing about a product.
>
I am not sure you are right. You are absolutely not writing from an
experience of fanfic similar to mine.
>Amateur diversion? A dalliance never to see the light of day? OK,
>maybe I have no problem with that. But it is ultimately an act of
>being a fan, not of being a writer.
I could do with a little clarification on this, because I thibnk this
sounds like a really interesting point that I can't get my mind around
enough to formulate a disputation. The trivial interpretations are
easy; if a writer is one who is paid to write, then, since fanfic is
unpaid in general, it is not the work of a writer, and you are
therefore correct. If a writer is one who committs words to paper,
then fanfic is the work of a writer and you are simply wrong. I
suspect, though, you're using 'writer' in a way which is very
abstract, but must include something to do with creativity. Now, I
can, and probably will, argue on that point further down the page.
>
>[An aside: Here's another view of it, one that ties more directly into
>fandom. Can we see fanfic as its own form of a "guerilla reading"?
>More of an act of INTERPRETATION about a particular show (teasing out
>subtexts, providing alternate readings THROUGH the creation of a text)
>with aims quite different from creating an original work of art (even
>one, a la _Grendel_ or the Wrede example above, that uses source
>material other than their own)?]
This is a stretch, and probably impossible to apply to all but a
narrow subset of fanfic. Of course, if this is true, then doesn't all
fanfic become literary commentary, and thus OK?
>
>To consolidate a thread or two--I know a few people responded to my
>"writing muscles" post, and my contention that writing takes work. It
>was said that, if that were the case, then the most valuable work
>would be the stuff that had the most struggle in its creation. That's
>not what I said, or meant.
No. What you said, as I took it, was related to my earlier comments
about not wasting effort, which I assumed you had misinterpreted to
mean that writing should be effortless; I didn't.
>
>It goes back to the process of writing. I'll say--for the fourth time,
>I guess--that developing one's own personal style is
>subsumed/irrelevant in fanfic. It's crucial in writing fiction, and in
You are plainly, simply, completely wrong about this. Indeed, nothing
matters *more* to the quality of fanfic than the personal style -- *because*
the characters aren't original (sometimes), the situations aren't
original (sometimes) and the universe isn't original (usually), *all*
that belongs to the fanfic author in the story is the personal
style. THere is fanfic *poetry*. There are epic romances told in
fanfic for shows where romance was never a component. It is an
exercise not in "how great of a story can I tell?" but of "How well
can I tell *this* story?"
>some ways nothing matters more. Every writer has to develop their own
>personal lexicon, the intersection of an internal and external
>language. Not because it's a literary affectation, but because it's
>necessary; a representation of something deeply ingrained in the
>psyche, and so personal that it hints at why a person would bother to
>write in the first place. For a particular story, yes, it might flow
>like water. But this ultimately takes careful attention to language
>and character, built up through an apprenticeship to writing. There is
>a terminal limit--a very immediate one, I think--with this type of
>writerly development when it comes to fanfic.
I'll need this limit explained to me.
>
>This process is not agony, it's not a matter of self-inflicted pain--I
>don't wnat to be misconstrued again. For many writers, they could not
>possibly do anything else that would give them as much internal
>satisfaction, as that they receive when they write. Even a genre of
>writing such as science fiction, it's most enduring work has a deeply
>personal iconography; it's symbolism at heart is rooted in why we tell
>stories in the first place: to better understand who we are and where
>we are going. The stories about aliens, about exploration, about the
>triumphs and tribulations of science, when done well, are all
>necessary because they are ultimately humanizing (and moving, because
>of it). They are more about who we are as people rather than the
>surface machinations of the "props" of the genre.
>
Yes. Here, I think I agree. WHat I don't see is how the fact that
one is writing fanfic takes away from this. Indeed, what you have in
the best fanfic is a lot of borrowing of *props* to "clothe" the story,
precisely *because* what's really important to the author is the
deeper underlying mucketymuck
>Sure, fanfic seems to quack like a duck, so to speak. It has the look
>and feel of real prose. It might even make gestures towards
>characterization. But it is a simulacrum of the concerns of
>storytelling; its intentions are none of the ones described in the
>previous paragraph. Fanfic's heart is squarely located in a media
>product.
No. Even at its worst, fanfic is an exercise *in* story*telling*.
Sort of like the origins of writing, when lots of drunken Greeks were
sittign around the fire, and whoever happened to be the local Guy Who
Was Good At This would tell a story abotu the trojan war. It wasn't a
new story -- he'd heard it himself from someone else. He didn't change
the names or the major details, because everyone would know he'd got
them wrong. But what made one storyteller better than another was his
style -- the little things he's put in, the way he'd elaborate certain
parts, or skim over the bits no one wanted to hear.
>
>And there's the rub.
>
>We live in an age where products are thrust upon us, where fiction is
>turning into commodity, where we're sacrificing a written literacy for
>a bastardized form of visual literacy. (This is one of the reasons I
>love IF to begin with.) But fanfic to me is problematic because of
>this. It inherently is tied to a commodification. We need more than
>ever stories that are subversive and innovative, that can knock
>people's socks off. We need writing that creates its own mythologies.
>
Funny business, this modern world. A few thousand years ago, you
didn't go around creating your own mythology. You used someone
else's. There was a collective literary playground, and we all had
fun in it. I can maybe get my mind around the difference (in terms of
"how good a story can be written in this field) between historical
fiction and fanfic, but it's still, last I checked, acceptable to
write stories based on mythology. If that's okay, I suspect a lot of
the differences between that and fanfic (excluding legality issues, of
course) are due purely to percieved quality difference in the source.
>And to those who say, "well, why can't writing be entertainment, why
>can't it be mindless, what's wrong with popcorn books or popcorn
>fanfic"...well, there's nothing wrong with it, to a point. We've
>always had our penny dreadfuls. I realize that the technologies of the
>cheaply-printed pamphlet serials of the Victorian era helped foster
>the need and hunger for literacy, and helped democratize writing in
>general. But the penny dreadfuls are subsuming nearly everything now,
>and it's accelerated by the ENTIRE IDEA of a media tie-in, authorized
>by a publisher or fanfic, it doesn't matter.
>
All right. So, fanfic is less bad if it's fanfic of a novel?
ALso, it sounds an awful lot like you're condemning fanfic for not
being "literary enough". Which means you're condemning fanfic
*authors*, because your argument is no longer such that
they could "redeem" themselves by writing original fiction; most of
them arent' capable of being "literary", and wouldn't do better than
to write the average pulp stuff, just in an original universe.
>And yes (fending off something I know will probably come)--a Pynchon
>or Alfred Bester novel published by Penguin or Random House might be
>feeding the bottom line of a large company...ultimately. But a work of
>quality, of real feck and vision counters this to a great degree, I
>think, if it's able to get out there to its ideal audience, and make a
>cultural impact. The technologies of publishing aren't the problem per
>se--it's the fact that they're out of balance. A large publisher will
>leave a giant like Pynchon alone, because he can still move 100K of a
>book. But he got his roots and his start in an earlier era. What about
>the next Pynchon? The next Bester? The next Tiptree? Where are they
>going to get published in this climate? Who's going to be the next
>innovative midlist author that's going to be squeezed out of shelving
>space?
Okay. You've sort of stumbled off into
rant-against-the-corporationspace. ANd I'm really hoping I'm missing
somethign here, because it looks an awful lot like the sort of
"literary snobbery" I mentioned upthread is underlying this all. "Your
fiction isn't literary enough for us. Bother us not with your common
scum."
>
>And yes, to reiterate, fanfic and the media tie-ins are part and
>parcel, intricately tied together in this dilemma. And no, fanfic
>isn't subverting this power structure in any way shape or form. You're
>not "sticking it to the man." If anything, it's exacerbating the
>problem even more.
>
Frankly, yay. Sticking it to the man for the sake of sticking it to
the man is so 60's. Frankly, if the Man can produce a TV show I want
to write fanfic for, then I'd just as soon not Stick It To Him.
>This might be a very old fashioned way of looking at writing. But I
>hope it better explains as to where I'm coming from.
I suspect it does. THough maybe I hope that my harsher interpretations
are misunderstandings.
ems...@mindspring.com
inflammatory as well. Since I'm one of the people whom it is
annoying, I've tried to ignore it, but I feel the irrepressible need,
at this point, to say a few words.
Those opposed to fanfiction have advanced several arguments against
it:
1. Writing fanfiction is illegal.
2. Works of fanfiction are inherently inferior to "original fiction."
3. Using another author's material is an offensive crime against that
author (individual authors who don't seem to mind notwithstanding).
Of these, number 1 and number 3 have to do with legalisms and concepts
of idea ownership, which have been flogged uselessly around here and
which I would prefer not to re-explore. 2 is interesting, though. I
think (though my opinion is arrived at subjectively) that it is false
on the face of it: I have read fan fiction that was, in my opinion, of
a quality equal to the original work from which it derived, if not
superior. I have read fan fiction that was characterized by a clear
and definite authorial voice, by excellent grammar and spelling, by
imagination and thoughtful plotting. I have read fan fiction that
moved me profoundly, that illuminated the human condition in some way,
or that elegantly satirized or commented upon the literary genres
involved. Then again, I've also waded through incredible bodies of
misspelled, lumpish prose in which nothing happens other than that a
popular tv character takes a bath. Either way, my opinion is
subjective and probably inadmissable as argument.
There seem to be two chief prongs to the inherent-inferiority
argument:
a. Using someone else's characters and world setting atrophies the
muscles that one needs as an author. It is a kind of creative
dependency that prevents one from making the effort that one ought to
be making in order to achieve Real Art.
b. Using someone else's characters and etc. is a sign of artistic
laziness and indicates the author's inability to come up with anything
better on his or her own.
This pair has a persuasive quality off the top: it *is* true that
making up a world, or a set of characters, is a lot of work. It is
true that the quality of fanfic is often poor, which leads one to
suspect that perhaps it is not a genre that encourages artistic
development. It is also true that a casual glance through the types
of fanfic available reveal an unusually high quota of fiction-for-use
rather than fiction-for-reception. For those unfamiliar with this
idea, I refer to the concept put forth by C.S. Lewis in _An Experiment
In Criticism_, often referred to here, that it is possible to regard a
piece as art -- with all the thought and engagement that that entails
-- or to regard it as something "for use". Pornography is for use;
erotica, perhaps, for reception. The dividing line is a bit of a
subjective thing. But when one reads the fifteenth (or five
hundredth) story in which Agent Mulder falls in love with a woman who
happens to resemble the story's author, one begins to suspect Ulterior
Motives in its writing; this is the "Mary Sue" category of fanfic.
Related is the tendency to manipulate attractive characters into bed,
however implausibly, and have them do a variety of colorful things to
each other which would not be out of place on alt.sex.stories.
*But*, I would argue, the fact that the author's motives were impure
in some cases does not constitute a blanket argument about the nature
of fanfic. The cult of originality -- the concept that inspiration
from beyond all other human sources is necessary for good work -- is,
I think, essentially a Romantic idea. And it is all very well for
artists who live alone in garrets and then die young, preferably of
consumption, while the ink freezes in sludgy black rime in their
inkwells. But I would rather put the artist in the heart of a
community; acknowledge his inheritances; and permit influence and
borrowing.
There's a continuum here, no doubt. But Homer sang about characters
who belonged to an established tradition; the Greek dramatists, and
then the Romans, recast the same material in their own ways. Stories
of significance were not enshrined in a single, immutable form, but
were subject to constant recasting and adaptation, and many of those
adaptations have themselves come down to us -- together with their
originals -- as the classics of their ages. Racine's Phedre is not a
pathetic work for having taken up a story already written by Euripides
in the Hippolytus centuries previously. Pitch out every author who
has adopted, recast, changed around the endings, written sequels,
filled in the unexplored spaces of a story -- and you lose much of the
literature of classical antiquity, medieval mystery plays, the matter
of Britain, Dante, Shakespeare, chunks of French classical drama,
Wagner's Ring, "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead," half the
musicals on Broadway, and the majority of Disney's animated feature
films. (Pity about ending on such a bathetic note; but whatever one
chooses to say about Disney, I don't think "artistically uninventive"
applies to, say, "Snow White.") And, heaven help us, what would
become of the visual arts? ("Make up something new," Ion says to
Caravaggio, "and please spare us this tired 'Madonna and child'
business.")
"Yes," my imagined interlocutor might say, "but most of those stories
were part of a shared cultural inheritance, with the original author
or authors unknown." Very well; that's true. But it is an argument
that falls under the heading of "crimes against an author (by stealing
his material)." If we are asking whether it is fundamentally
unproductive to use existing character or plot material as the basis
of one's own creativity, I think the answer must be a resounding
negative. The degree of borrowing may vary. The skill and
inventiveness of the author may change, as may his purpose. Sometimes
the idea is to lampoon what went before; sometimes it is to overturn
the whole meaning of the original story (as with, for instance,
Euripides' Helen) or to adjust something that did not sit quite right
in the first telling (as some have argued for Valerius Flaccus'
treatment of the Argonautica as opposed to that of Apollonius of
Rhodes). Sometimes it is to use the original story as the launching
point for a completely different conceptual project (as Tom Stoppard
likes to do.)
"Very well," combats my interlocutor, "but it is still a superior
exercise to develop everything anew from scratch." Is it, then?
Rhetorical training in antiquity often relied heavily on the
elaboration of set themes, partly because in excusing the student from
coming up with an original thesis it left him free to turn full
attention to his style, memorization, mode of delivery, and so forth.
If you want to learn to build worlds, then yes, you should learn that
by building them: draw maps, make family trees, invent gods,
contemplate planetary masses, apply your own physical constants,
devise language and biology anew from the beginning if you like. But
I do not believe that there is nothing to be learned about prose
style, or characterization, or mood, from participation in a known
world or use of a known story. One of the most useful writing
exercises I did as a teenager was to rewrite the story of the three
little pigs eight times -- once in free verse, once as though it were
a bit of pseudo-Indian folk tale, once as a fable about class
struggle, once as conspiracy theory, once as a crossover with
Cinderella... It was both entertaining and instructive, and is an
exercise I still assign to my own writing students on occasion.
Likewise, emulation is a powerful tool for prose-style development.
Read yourself a passage of Dickens, or Austen, or Hemingway, and then
see whether you can produce something that sounds similar. It is not
especially easy, but it will teach you interesting things about the
uses of language and the shape of a sentence.
Writing a character who is already developed can be a bit like this as
well: if you have a sense (from experience) of how that character is
*supposed* to sound, it is an interesting exercise to try to produce
new dialogue in that character's voice. And then you can tell when
you get it wrong, and think about why you got it wrong.
The interlocutor (let's call him Ion) is, I sense, getting decidedly
peevish by now. "You're talking about serious training to write, and
that's not what fanfic authors are interested in." Well, maybe -- I
know of several fanfic authors who were working quite seriously on
their writing, and solicited all the same sorts of advice that one
might seek at any "serious" writing workshop. But that's neither here
nor there. We have now moved from the question of whether it is
possible for derivative fiction to be good training to the question of
motivation: the accusation that fanfic authors are lazy and that they
are not interested in producing good art.
Guessing the motivation of a single author is dangerous; guessing the
collective motivation of many authors is likely to go seriously awry.
I began by admitting that there are many pieces of fan fiction that
have patently been written as exercises in self-gratification, so many
that there are nicknames for the particular categories of
gratification involved. There are also authors who are in it because
they want to participate in what the community is doing with the
originalfic source -- namely, fleshing out its background, tying off
ends that were left untied, exploring the implications of it. Alan
DeNiro referred to this (though, I sense, with a certain amount of
doubt) as "Guerrilla reading" -- which is, I think, close to the truth
in some ways. Writing a piece of fan fiction that continues where an
episode leaves off can be an act of commentary, creative prediction,
correction of things that went wrong. Such writing teases out
mysteries and contradictions and offers explanations for them (an
activity that, in other circles, goes under the name "scholarship.")
More fannish than writerly, more critical than artistic-- maybe. But
I'm not sure we can always so clearly draw a line between that which
invents and that which re-invents.
There's where the danger comes in, I suppose: an author might be
irked, purely on artistic terms, if a fanfic writer wrote about his
characters and did something with them that the original author didn't
intend; and the more convincing the fanfic, the more dangerous it is.
Michael Baxandall-- I love to invoke him, and I'm sure I've done so
here before, but I'll do it again; he is an art historian of some
note, and the passage that I always cite is his "Excursus on
Influence" from _Patterns of Intention_ -- Baxandall wrote a quite
cogent argument that to speak of an earlier work "influencing" a later
one is misleading; rather, later works shift earlier ones, changing
their meanings for all future readers or viewers. In that case,
though, it is not the Mary-Sue-fic and self-gratifying trivia that
matters: write a sequel to Jigsaw about Black and White picking out
curtains together and it will be justly ignored, leaving Graham
Nelson's concept pretty much unimpaired in the eyes of future players.
Write one in which they decide to go back and reverse the critical
events of the original game -- and do it so well that this piece
becomes as popular as the original -- and then you've done something
to "Jigsaw" itself, something that Graham might justly resent. But
you'll note that we've moved away from the argument that all fan
fiction is crap to the fear that it might in fact *not* be crap on
some occasions, and that it might thus garner a degree of attention
that would let it compete with the original on equal terms.
Considering the current legal system, fan fiction of commercial works
is fairly well forced to remain apocryphal rather than canonical.
Still, at their best, pieces of fan fiction can be both good story and
good commentary. And there is an element of play and participation
and experiment. Genres are mingled and crossovers made, sometimes,
not so that Angel can seduce Agent Scully or Legolas can meet
Ambassador Delenn (my brain hurts), but to explore the juncture of
different world types and storytelling styles. Like pseudo-Modernist
poems about Dr. Who, or that devastatingly hilarious
Xena-Warrior-Princess version of "I am the very model of a modern
Major General."
If there's a problem here, it's that the fan community often rewards
virtues other than artistic merit. Fan fiction authors often belong
to closed-ish communities, aware that what they're doing is looked on
as a bit odd by the general population; they have their local
celebrities, big fish in a small pond perhaps; and they write to
please, impress, and entertain each other, begging for feedback along
the way. (If anyone here is currently sneering down the length of his
nose, take a look around r.g.i-f and think again.) Because of the
ease of access and the absence of any certification-of-quality such as
that afforded by an actual publisher, it is more rewarding -- if
you're looking for immediate feedback -- to share your fiction with
such a group than to canvas new stuff before publishers who respond in
curt rejection letters if at all. And that allows the proliferation
of huge quantities of dreck. It also encourages, in some places and
cases, the passionate authorial engagement that leads to effort and
training and the development of craft.
After complaining about the Romantic movement a bit earlier, I would
be a hypocrite to claim that passion is *all*. Love for your subject
matter and even native genius are not all there is; craft develops
with practice. But passion isn't irrelevant, either, and it cannot be
simulated, however crafty you may be.
Here I suppose that Ion, being Ion, goes in for the direct attack:
"You seem awfully determined about this," he says. "Is there
something you'd like to tell us?"
Okay. Guilty as charged. I've probably written at the most 10 or 15
thousand words of fanfic, compared to unknown hundreds of thousands of
words of original fiction, non-fiction, polished correspondence, and
academic prose; I wouldn't say fan fiction has exactly been my chief
mode of creative output. So perhaps it would be disingenuous to
submit myself as a data point. But I don't think that what I wrote
about someone else's characters was fundamentally inferior on all
points to things I wrote about my own.
If I sound irked, though, it is not out of a desire to defend myself.
I have very little invested, at this point, in material I wrote when I
was 19, much of which is not to the best of my knowledge available
anywhere but the hard disk of an obsolete computer. (Well, that plus
a now-really-totally-lost sequel scene for Guy de Maupassant's La
Parure, which is probably the only thing of any value I have ever
written in a language other than English.)
No; what bothers me is the intellectual sloppiness of some of the
arguments against fan fiction. And, I suppose, the measure of
implicit bad advice mingled in with it. Teaching yourself to write
well often involves aiming at intermediate targets before moving to
advanced ones. It involves exercises that will not produce
breathtakingly original results. There is an apprenticeship before
mastery comes. Fan fiction may not always be the ideal medium for
that apprenticeship, but it is not as useless as it has been painted.
As for fear of emulation and imitation in general, that is outright
counterproductive. Yes, let's learn to express ourselves. Let's
shape our own styles. But it's not a process that occurs in a vacuum,
and I think creative writing teachers do their students a disservice
if they send them seeking a Voice without allowing them to study the
voices of others.
Then there's the casual condescension. No, people who write fan
fiction are not necessarily idiots, nor are they necessarily
unimaginative or untrained. You may disapprove of their behavior; you
may consider that they are doing a disservice to the kind of literary
development that you would like to see. But to dismiss entire classes
of people as your intellectual and creative inferiors is neither
politic, nor virtuous, nor wise.
Passenger Pigeon
Ross Raszewski) wrote:
> On 17 Jan 2002 19:32:19 -0800, Alan DeNiro <aland...@aol.com> wrote:
>
> >And there's the rub.
> >
> >We live in an age where products are thrust upon us, where fiction is
> >turning into commodity, where we're sacrificing a written literacy for
> >a bastardized form of visual literacy. (This is one of the reasons I
> >love IF to begin with.) But fanfic to me is problematic because of
> >this. It inherently is tied to a commodification. We need more than
> >ever stories that are subversive and innovative, that can knock
> >people's socks off. We need writing that creates its own mythologies.
>
> Funny business, this modern world. A few thousand years ago, you
> didn't go around creating your own mythology. You used someone
> else's. There was a collective literary playground, and we all had
> fun in it. I can maybe get my mind around the difference (in terms of
> "how good a story can be written in this field) between historical
> fiction and fanfic, but it's still, last I checked, acceptable to
> write stories based on mythology. If that's okay, I suspect a lot of
> the differences between that and fanfic (excluding legality issues, of
> course) are due purely to percieved quality difference in the source.
well, yes, but. The mythologies used weren't used just because they
were familiar characters or because they gave Euripides franchise
appeal. They were used because they were primal symbols with which the
audience could form a connection and through which the audience could
engage in an act of theatre more powerful and effective than any
produced today.
This point marks *my* main distinction between fan-fiction and literary
fiction using mythological ideas. Harry Potter isn't a symbol of
anything. (Well, okay, he's a symbol of the born-post-Cold-War
generation's feeling of renewed optimism and deserved yet unearned
enfranchisement, but I'm not so sure that Rowlings is trying to make
that point per se.) Peter Pan, on the other hand, is eternal youth, and
Hook is a movie about hitting your midlife crisis and rediscovering the
ideas of youth that you thought you had abandoned. Orestes is the man
who killed his mother for killing his father, and Euripides' Orestes (as
distinguished from the Oresteia) is a story of doing something you think
is just and finding that you may have been wrong. The distinction is
not that Rowlings is an inferior writer, but that Harry Potter is not
consciously literary, but merely fictional. This is certainly a valid
choice, but it means that any analysis of your work ranges from
unnecessary to misleading with regards to your beliefs and attitudes,
and that holds true for any fan fiction as well, necessarily, because
the same characters are involved, inspired into creation by the same
forces, whether artistic or commercial.
> ALso, it sounds an awful lot like you're condemning fanfic for not
> being "literary enough". Which means you're condemning fanfic
> *authors*, because your argument is no longer such that
> they could "redeem" themselves by writing original fiction; most of
> them arent' capable of being "literary", and wouldn't do better than
> to write the average pulp stuff, just in an original universe.
I think his argument is exactly the opposite. Certainly mine is; I
would never state that a fan-fiction author is incapable of writing
truly important and powerful literature. However. I will state that it
would be orders of magnitude more difficult to write it in a universe
created by someone else, *especially* if that universe was not created
with literary concepts and symbols in mind, but merely to be appealing
as entertainment. It's conceivably possible, to my mind, that a
fan-fiction author is dooming themselves to writing brilliant fiction in
someone else's world when they could be writing brilliant literature in
their own -- and that bothers me.
--
William Burke, passeng...@email.com if you say so
"Many people include in their signatures contact information, and perhaps
a joke or quotation." -- Simon Fraser Go Slugs!
http://www.passengerpigeon.net (not com, not org)